Life Serial 4: Imago Dei
by Shade Embry
Summary: *Completed with series finale music video!* Sequel to "Heaven's Fortune." 24/The Agency/Freakylinks/Dragnet. One war could tear the world apart. The second could mean far worse. Both are happening before their eyes.
1. Gone To Zero

Imago Dei 

Brittany "Thespis" Frederick

**Summary:** The sequel to "Heaven's Fortune." When the world goes to war, they answer the call; but when their own war hits them at home, it's up to those who would be heroes how far they fall.

**Genre: **Action/Adventure/Drama

**Rating:** PG for a little language

**Dedication:** To Tisha, as always, the better half of me.

**Author's Note:** This is the fourth mega-crossover in the _Life Serial_ series, which began with "Coventry" and "Their Law" and went on to "Heaven's Fortune." Like the last part, this part will be a crossover between _24, The Agency, Freakylinks_, and the new Ed O'Neill/Ethan Embry series of _Dragnet_. Like usual, I don't own any of the stuff that's not mine, and it's all in fun. 

I would also like to caution readers that this installment will deal with **real-life situations, including issues of terrorism and international war.** Although the situations are largely fictionalized (based off of reality but generally untrue), if you might object to such content, you probably want to avoid this story, which throws the characters into a more reality-based situation than the previous three.

Home Base San Marcos 

**6:31 P.M. Wednesday**

          My knuckles gripped the sides of the bed. I was hoping, praying that this was all a nightmare or a lie. But it was neither. The statement had come down: it has begun.

_Without a soul_

_My spirit's sleeping somewhere cold_

_Until you find it there_

_And lead it back home_

          Before the first satellite photos crossed my screen, before the news anchor finished a sentence, I jumped resolutely to my feet, grabbed both my standard firearms and my attache case, and bolted from my bedroom. I nearly ran into Eric Weiss in the hall; he'd been coming from upstairs. His standing orders were the same as mine: when it goes, you go.

Wake me up inside 

_Wake me up inside, save me_

_Call my name and save me from the dark_

_Bid my blood to run_

_Before I come undone  
Save me from the nothing I've become_

          Everyone else had MSNBC on in the living room and they knew what was happening – I had no time to explain it even if they didn't. My strike team members – Derek Barnes and his friends, Chloe, Lan and Jason – were all situated around the TV and tense as hell. Our sixth housemate, Leticia, was with them. She wouldn't be going – she wasn't vetted for the field, and anybody could be called upon to risk their lives at any given moment.

          I barely had time to make eye contact with Derek for some sort of sign to them of what had to be done as Weiss and I bolted for the door, ran through the door. We'd be going to separate Central Intelligence Agency installations. We looked each other in the eyes for one moment, then we both sprinted for our own vehicles. Every second mattered. Even now, just one minute, or was it two, after the word came down, agents from all divisions and all offices would be getting the call, summoned to arms.

Now that I know what I'm without 

_You can't just leave me_

_Breathe into me and make me real_

_Bring me to life_

          That included me. As the Administrative Assistant Special Agent In Charge of the Counter Terrorist Unit's Los Angeles Division, I would be one of the people on the operational front lines. Although my job was basically to keep ground ops running, it was also possible I could be sent out on an operation in the blink of an eye. Counterterrorism was what this was all about, and we knew it. All of us had been preparing for this day. On standby for the last 48 hours since the ultimatum had been given, we understood that more than likely we were going to have to fight. And now we were assuming the risk.

Wake me up inside 

_Wake me up inside, save me_

_Call my name and save me from the dark_

_Bid my blood to run_

_Before I come undone  
Save me from the nothing I've become_

          I shoved my keys in the ignition, backed out quickly, and pushed my Altima as fast as it would go. Driving one-handed, I grabbed for my cell phone headset and dialed my office immediately. Assistant Special Agent In Charge Tony Almeida took the call. 

"I'm coming in," I told him. "What are my op orders?" I wanted to know what I was doing before I got in there, before somebody's life paid the price. 

After a heartbeat he got back to me: "You're running the room."

          "Acknowledged. Keep me updated. I'll be there in half an hour." I hung up the phone, tore off the headset and threw it on the passenger seat, running a red light in the process. Around me I could see the city changing, tensing, preparing. People were aware of what was happening around them and they would react accordingly. It was our job to make sure they didn't have to go to sleep at night wondering if they'd wake up in the morning.

Frozen inside without your touch  
Without your love, darling  
Only you are the life among the dead

          My brain was already preparing an active operational plan. The operations orders Tony had just given me meant that I would be, at least until told otherwise, the senior agent operating out of CTU Los Angeles. That meant both he and our superior, Jack Bauer, were both involved in operations. As third in command, that meant I was the senior administrative agent, responsible for planning out and holding on while they made things happen.

          I had never run the room before. I had assisted Jack and Tony in running the room, but never had the responsibility been solely mine. It didn't matter. I was trained and ready to take it on, and lives and operational success would depend on the choices I would make. At seventeen, I had become a pivotal agent in the defense of my country. I was not about to look away when the moment we were waiting for needed my attention.

_All this time I can't believe I couldn't see_

_Kept in the dark but you were there to follow me_

_I've been sleeping a thousand years it seems_

_Got to open my eyes to everything_

_Without a thought, without a voice, without a soul_

_Don't let me die here_

_There must be something wrong_

When I made it to the office and parked my car in its usual spot next to Jack's Yukon, I noted that many of the vehicles of the senior staff were already present. I ran inside and onto the main floor, where operations were in full swing. I didn't hesitate for even a moment, but as I threw myself into the fray, I knew things were shaping up to be big. The home team was already waiting for me to issue my first orders, but active operatives were making sure they had all the equipment and resources they needed. 

I spotted familiar allies among the ranks – field operatives like Christopher Gautreau, Stephen Claire, Jack and Tony, and more base-related operatives like Kevin Blaisdell, my partner Lex Richards, and computer specialist Paula Schaeffer. Even Division supervisors Jackson Haisley and George Mason were on site, as befit protocol. We were all present and accounted for.

          As I rushed over to my workstation beside Lex and began pulling up necessary information, I could hear Jack give the official order: "Listen up – Brittany's got the wheel!" 

Wake me up inside 

_Wake me up inside, save me_

_Call my name and save me from the dark_

_Bid my blood to run_

_Before I come undone  
Save me from the nothing I've become_

_Bring me to life…_


	2. Lines of Duty

**7:31 P.M.**

          Derek was feeling restless, to the point of maybe just punching something. Across the operations table, Jason took a good look at him. "Calm down, man, everything's going to be okay." His friend nodded. "I know, I know … it's just all so sudden, you know?" The others still around to work on operations nodded. Lan and Chloe were already there; the final member of the team, Special Agent Ben Carroway, had also been called in, but to the FBI's Los Angeles office. For all intents and purposes, the complement of Code Black had been depleted of all its government officers, which was probably what was making Derek restless.

          Although myself, Weiss and Carroway were employed government agents, our second job by night was as officers of Code Black, the special strike team I had formed almost seven months ago. As one of two people London's CIB trusted to deal with the possibility of a U.S., specifically Los Angeles, invasion by Code Fives, better known as vampires, since such an invasion had broken out in England, I had a responsibility. One that had been stepped up when the only other CIB agent and my ex, Michael Colefield, had gone back to CIB London. Thanks to what appeared to be a psychic vision, I knew there was an invasion coming. I'd renovated my apartment into an ops center and formed Code Black to handle the threat. Everything had gone pretty smoothly, with the occasional slay … but that all could change.

          "What's our activity map look like?" Derek asked Jason, with this in mind.

          "I'll pull it up right now," Lan, resident computer expert, obliged him, bringing up the graphic where we tracked all Code Five activity or suspected activity in Los Angeles with blue markers.

          There were about a half-dozen blue markers on the video screen. Some of them were ringed with black, a sign that they were unconfirmed, but there were six of them nonetheless. Standing there, all four of the remaining team members made eye contact, knowing what they had to do and how long they had to do it.

          We had devised safeguards and plans as soon as the CIA was given its 48-hour heads-up. Myself, Weiss, Ben, and maybe even Leticia would be all called in to work and God only knew when we would be back, so Derek and his company had to make sure nothing else broke because we might not be able to handle it. They had contact information for some of my network, including Det. Frank Smith over at the LAPD and a contact number for Vaughan Rice back at CIB London, but mostly they were standing on their own.

          The communications lines, all of them, rambled through my headset and I had to switch over to the channel that I needed before the strings of commands got to be too much information for me to handle. My base leaders – Lex, Paula and Kevin, each responsible for one or probably more field teams – glanced up at me. "We're ready to go here," I called and Jackson walked over to meet me. I continued, "If and when we assign teams, I've got three points ready to cover."

          "Good," Jackson said, "I'll let you know when we send teams out. Keep the information moving and just keep everyone on the ball until you hear otherwise."

          "No problem," I said and meant it.

          "How's your father?"

          I was caught off guard by this question. My father is a military reservist, and I called home when we were put on standby to make sure everything was okay, which, of course, was all up in the air. "He's activated," I said, "But still at home so far." And he still didn't know his daughter was fighting the good fight he was waiting to possibly be involved in.

          "That's good news then," Jackson said. "Things should run smoothly."

          Yeah, _should_. As he walked off I exhaled and waited. In my experience – three years, eight months and a week, the last eight months and a week involving a counter-terrorism field operation apprehending a traitor, a missing-persons/attempted murder/invasion case, and a homicide instigated by our own superiors, I knew things hardly ever went the way they should.

          I snapped a little harsher than intended, "Kevin, get me another systems backup check."

          "On it," he said, thankfully ignoring my tone of voice.

          Lex was staring at me. "Everything all right?" he asked softly.

          "I … I'm fine, everything's fine," I got out in an uneasy rush. "Just … stay on things."

          The paranoia is the hardest part. Derek, Jason, Lan and Chloe were all discussing what they were looking at but they kept going back to the worst possible scenario. You prepare for the worst, and you hope for the best, I used to always tell them, to the point where they could repeat it like a mantra and roll their eyes appropriately.

          "It would make sense," Lan was saying patiently. "We're going to go to war. The country will be otherwise distracted."

          "How and when would they make a move?" Jason inquired.

          "That's what we need to find out."

          "Can we even handle this?" Chloe continued. "We're at half strength as it is."

          "I don't know," Derek told her, reaching for another map, "but we have to try."

          The announcement was all over the news stations: "The campaign to liberate Iraq has begun." Or something like that. The inevitabiity kept me from completely paying attention to the actual words that were said.

          It was Jack who moved into action first, giving orders with his usual bullet precision. "All right, I want a team here to respond to any directives coming down … Kevin, Paula, Lex, Matt, Mark, you're here under Brittany, you will be Team Alpha. Two active field teams, the first is with Tony, Team Beta, you know who you are, the second is Team Delta with me, Steve, Chris, I need you with me. We have a set of objectives per each team, and we'll act upon them as appropriate. Any questions as to those orders?"

          Silence filled the room.

          I locked eyes with the two agents across the floor who were supposed to be on my team and I could see even in their veteran gazes that they really didn't understand what was happening here. I wondered if any of us did or if we were just winging it. Either way we were about to get a pop quiz.

          Jack surveyed us all, then gave the final command as I held my breath.

          "Let's get to work."

          Uneasy silence had fallen over the ops table back at home base. Finally, Derek looked slowly from the table across it at Jason, who noncommittally met his gaze.

"Does this mean what I think it means?" Derek asked, needing to hear it said.

          Jason nodded, picking up the phone. "We're going to war."


	3. Fire Inside

**8:26 P.M. Wednesday**

          Matt DeVincentis, the counteragency specialist, had his arms folded across his chest and was sitting there looking at reports he'd probably committed to memory just to make sure he had them right. Mark Holden, one of our more senior agents, was going over the tertiary objectives list. Lex, Paula and Kevin were getting ready for operation services. These were the members of Team Alpha who weren't paying any attention to me at all, because they already knew what to do.

          My cell phone rang and I set my headset on the desk so I could answer it. "Agent Frederick, go ahead."

          Jason was on the line, speaking with an uncertain clarity. The more he spoke, the more unsettled I became. If what he was telling me was correct, while the nation went to war, Los Angeles would be the battleground of our war. Why hadn't I considered the possibility that the Code Fives might attack while the nation was devoted to another cause? I mentally cursed myself.

          "Initiate preparations and keep me posted," I told him, hanging up briskly.

          "What was that about?" Matt asked me. "Orders coming in?"

          "It wasn't business," was all I said, letting the statement drop. 

          "Okay, so you just normally talk like this at home, too?"

          "Drop it and leave it, Agent," I warned him in a low tone. 

          He looked at me almost like he was hurt, but I didn't care. I went back to my panel.

_Well I can't ever really believe _

_No one was sent to get me _

All of my intense dedication went to studying a map of probable hot spots that Lex had uploaded for me just a few moments before. I was team leader and furthermore in charge of all base operations until I was told otherwise. My only objective was to ensure that CTU ran smoothly and our targets were achieved. But my second duty kept calling me as all commitments do. I set my jaw and tried to focus on the international war, rather than the war at home.

          Understandably, that didn't work too well. My hands gripped the sides of my console and finally I just couldn't look at it anymore. It was all just lines and dots and markers and notes and what did it all mean?

_And I feel like I'm being erased _

_No one got left here _

_I'm all alone _

_No one was sent to get me _

Jason sat in front of the map trying to make some sense out of it. A marker was placed at all the relevant locations. The distance between CTU and San Marcos was the most prominent but also the least useful note in his mind. He kept thinking that if he stared at it long enough, some sort of pattern might emerge. The absoluteness of going to war kept holding on to his brain.

          Derek stood up, walked over to another console, and activated the security systems. In the event of an invasion, an assault on headquarters was highly probable. If the door had crashed in right that second he wouldn't have been in the least surprised. He was beginning to think there was no surprise, only being more stunned.

_I'm all alone _

_No one got left here _

_But I'm fine _

_No one got left here _

"Is she coming back?" he asked Jason offhandedly. "Are any of them?"

          Jason paused a moment.

          "I don't think so, D. Not when it's like this."

          Derek fell momentarily silent, then just nodded to himself, knowing he was powerless in that one respect, but not powerless in any other. That was what was going to matter today: the balance of power.

_I can't even breathe when I see _

_The pictures sent without you _

MSNBC, CNN, Fox News were playing back the same footage on all of our monitors, sound bites from Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's initial statement. That damn one-liner over and over again as if I didn't already know the war was going on. I looked to Matt and asked him to pull up some initial plans while Beta and Delta were already preparing for their own orders.

          "Tony, we need somebody at Division," I yelled across the floor. 

          "I'm on it," he replied. "George, how do you want to play it?"

          Mason: "We've got connections to the other government agencies, we'll just play it by ear." He looked decidedly uncomfortable with the fact that although we had some of the best counterterrorism specialists in the country in this office, the only thing we could do was wait and react.

_I feel like I've been erased _

_No one got left here _

As they were debating this I turned to Matt, who was making notes on counteragency operations. Before he came to CTU – and he worked here when I got here – he already had a work history in some other department. He also has a reputation for having seen a lot of things and understanding their intracacies. It made me feel comfortable working with him.

          "What do you think is going to happen?" I asked randomly.

          "Me? It's not for me to say," he told me, shrugging slightly. "In my experience, you never know."

          "Lie to me."

_I'm all alone _

_No one was sent to get me _

"I can't lie to you."

          I nodded, turning my gaze away from him back onto the main floor, quoting softly to myself. Another one of my nervous habits is racking my eidetic memory for somebody else's words and constantly using them as a defense mechanism. Any time I get really scared, I repeat to myself some inspirational quote in hopes of shaking the uneasiness that settles around me.

          This time it was French literature: "When man faces destiny, destiny ends and man comes into his own."

          Maybe if I kept saying it, I'd believe it.

_I'm all alone _

_No one got left here _

As Team Beta went out with their first orders of the day – a security examination – I settled my headset on, clicked on to the appropriate frequency, and waited. Nothing was supposed to happen. It seemed bizarre waiting and planning when the outcome you wanted was absolutely nothing, but in this business somehow things always worked out in the end.

          I hoped that I could say the same for Code Black back home. Maybe there would be a way for me to get out and still arrive in time to help them, to lead them as I had said I would. Maybe someone could cover for me. But as uncertain as the situation was right now, I knew that was a strategical and logical impossibility.

_I'm so sick of this terrible instinct _

_It's so hard now _

_Just to find you _

"They're obviously not all just taking a bunch of flights to invade," Chloe was saying. "I mean, that's possible for, I don't know, backup, but they've got to be here already."

          "Hopefully in half a year we've put some dents into them," Lan said, nonplussed. "How didn't we notice? They've just been here and we didn't get to them?"

          "No use blaming ourselves," Jason cut in. "Besides, it's not like we can check every British tourist. By the time we get to a threat assessment…"

          Derek interrupted gravely. "… it's already too late."

_So sick of this terrible instinct _

_I can only find you _

With Tony's team gone, CTU's in-house ranks had thinned out considerably. Paula was running op-serv, or operational services, for them and I had asked her to provide me with audio. They would be out in the field for hours, looking for the slightest security risk or something that didn't sit right. Of course, we all knew that the best agents can spot a problem in anything and everything, making it that much harder to set apart real threats.

          Jack put down the phone. "Team Delta, we have a situation!"

_But I'm fine _

_No one got left here_

          "What's going on?" Mason said even as the team began forming up.

          "The INS is executing a raid on a possible terrorist residence and they want some backup." 

          I looked to Lex. "Lex, take op-serv on Delta."

          "Got it. Bringing op-serv online now."

          With a nod, I called across to Jack, "You're clear."

          He nodded, then looked back to me for a moment. "I want you with me on this one."

          "Me?"

          "Yes. Let's go. I could use you here."

          I wasn't going to disobey. Behind me, Mark put his hand on my shoulder. "We've got it covered," he said. I handed him my headset, popping in an earpiece as a replacement, then circled around Lex to my workstation and grabbed my gun, still in its holster, out of the bottom right desk drawer. Clipping my holster on, I rushed over to join Jack and the departing team.

          "What are you thinking?" I said to Jack as I formed up.

          "That things never come out like I think they do."


	4. Black and Blue

**9:33 P.M. Wednesday**

          Standing in the middle of a house in suburban Los Angeles, I was ready to kill someone. Things had gone so incredibly wrong that it wasn't even funny.

          We had met the INS agents at their office and followed their van with ours to down the street from the target home. I was sitting in the back of our vehicle with Jack, Steve and other team members, while Chris was doing the driving. A check in with Lex back at base confirmed that no cause for alarm was in the area, and that Mark was running base ops just fine. Jack smiled thinly at my latter question, knowing my immense, perfectionist dedication to my job. I signed off with Lex and turned to regard him.

          "You still haven't explained why you need me on this, Jack."

          "Because if we do get this guy, or these people, we're going to need somebody to interrogate them and quickly."

          "Why not Kevin or Matt?"

          "They're good, but I need to be sure today." He was looking at me deadly serious now. "What you did in England was something we'd been trying to do for over a year. You did it in two days."

          "I'm not as good as everyone thinks I am, Jack."

          My boss and mentor gripped my hand tightly as if to say he understood.

          As we pulled up, I did my usual pre-flight check of my Kevlar vest, my gun and my handcuffs, never to be caught unaware. Jack was the first out, and I followed him, Chris circling around to meet with us as the rest of Team Delta and the INS agents took up positions creating a perimeter around the residence which had been worked out on the drive. Jack was on one side of the door, the INS squad leader on the other, and he had intentionally put me behind him. Now his eyes gave me a silent command.

          I put my hand to my earpiece and asked Lex for one more check of our operational security. He confirmed that there were no primary or tertiary threats around our target zone. The INS squad leader finished confirming the address, and all of us silently counted down from three in our heads.

          Three.

          I took a deep breath, cleared my mind, and shut myself down emotionally.

          Two.

          I gripped my weapon and mentally reinforced my objectives.

          One.

          I let the soldier in me come to the surface.

          Zero.

          Jack covered the INS agent as he kicked the door in and announced our presence. As our point man, he then followed. I was at his back with other agents behind me, hearing at least a back door also being stormed in by members of our perimeter team. It was all a huge vacuum of noise, and I mentally tuned it out as we began our interior sweep. We were looking not for any Middle Eastern national, but for a Frenchman and terrorist sympathizer. The surveillance-obtained image of him was in my mind's eye.

          The disturbing thing was this place was like any other house: spacious living room/dining room, kitchen behind and off the dining room, a few bedrooms and a bathroom to the right of the door. I could very well have grown up in a place like this if I had been raised in Los Angeles. It was almost surreal, the _Los Angeles Times_ on the coffee table next to the suspicious equipment. But that was evidence control's job, not mine. I ran to cover a hallway entrance, checked down it, and bolted to the following corner.

          As I again checked my angle, I yelled, "Anything?"

          "Nothing yet," Stephen replied. 

          I glanced down the rest of the hallway, which appeared to be a dead end except for storage closets, then proceeded down it. There were three doors, all on my left. The first one was empty, the space clear. The other two were connected, both doors for a large closet space that didn't have much more than miscellaneous housewares present. Closing the closet doors, I turned and started back on my way toward the main room. I made it round the corner to the first part of the hallway when something hit me and I doubled back.

          For the majority of my life, before moving to San Marcos and Los Angeles, I had lived in a very small town about halfway between San Diego and L.A. There wasn't ever much to do there, so we ended up amusing ourselves in weird ways, including going to look at model houses just because we could. I recalled one where a closet appeared to be just a closet, except if you turned the corner once inside there was another empty crawlspace. Now I stood outside the first, unconnected door, gun now in my right hand as I tentatively hovered over the doorknob with my left.

          Breathe.

          Soundlessly I turned the knob and gently pushed the door back with my shoulder, moving into the doorway as I switched my weapon back to my dominant hand. Taking my time, back almost against but not touching the left wall, I moved down the closet space until I reached the end o the shorter left wall and the turn. Another breath, quick and expedient, then I turned quickly around the corner, staring into the crawlspace, weapon up and safety off. 

          I reached behind me with my right hand for my handcuffs. The French national was compacted in the crawlspace really meant for little kids and people much smaller than him. Still holding my weapon, I ordered him out, watching him crawl toward me, then cuffed him and took him into custody. My only comment: "You really should have left."

          Followed by, as we made it out into the hall: "Target acquired."

          Jack, Steve and everyone else were waiting for me when I emerged back into the living room/dining room with my new charge in tow. A great many of them were doing evidence passes and collecting anything of interest. I handed the national off to one of the INS agents. "I need a secure space for questioning in five minutes," I told him, and he ordered someone else to clear out a room for me. Meanwhile, I stepped over to Jack.

          "Where'd you find him?"

          "Closet crawlspace down the hall."

          "Good thinking."

          "It was luck." I let out a long breath, already psyching myself into the state of mind I would need to be in to achieve maximum results in my interrogation.

          There were sounds and shouting and I turned and ran in the direction of the uproar, Jack behind me. We found the French national on the floor in a fetal position, the INS agent the first one had turned him over to standing over him. The guy had been beaten pretty good, and I just snapped, grabbing the INS agent by the collar. _"What happened?"_

"He came after me."

          _"He came after you? He's handcuffed!"_ I was ready to clock the guy right there, but Jack came over and took control of the situation. He ordered Chris to take care of the national while he himself began to chew out the INS guy, insisting that he would be up on charges for assaulting a suspect in custody. A moment later I heard a sound that had to be Jack's fist connecting with the agent's midsection. Since Teri's death, a dark beast was lurking in Jack's soul, and he let it out for special occasions.

          I stood in the dining room, taking several rapid breaths to attempt to get the red color in my vision to go away. That was where I was now, strugging for some semblance of self-control.

          "Brittany?" Steve had appeared in front of me.

          I met his gaze slowly. "What?"

          "Chris has got him stabilized in the van. Did you want to question him now or later?"

          "Let's give him a few minutes. He just got brutalized." Nonetheless, I followed Steve out of the house and down the walk back toward where we had parked our van. I was disgusted at the new rules, or at least the rules these guys had: just because we were at war against terrorism didn't mean we could just kick the ass of suspected terrorist. There were ethics, morality, integrity, things like that. Obviously these guys had none of the above.

          My cell phone rang. "Agent Frederick, go ahead."

          Lan was on the line: "We're making a move on some primary targets."

          "Is there anything you need?"

          "Derek wants to know if you're coming."

          "I'm on assignment. Call backup if you have to."

          "All right. I'll let you know what happens."

          "Thank you." I paused, then: "You have the green light."

          "Got it."

          Another pause. "Good luck." I hung up after that, with little else to say.

          Steve and I climbed into the van on the opposite side from Chris, who was babysitting the French national, having pulled out the first aid kit to tend to his wounds. With the two of them backing me up I slid into the seat a short distance from the captured man and looked him over for a long moment. It was kind of disturbing because that moment I had more in common with him than I did with the people who were supposed to be on my side.


	5. Bearing The Fallout

**10:28 P.M. Wednesday**

          "Nobody leaves!" Derek yelled over the sounds of violence, ducking from an incoming attack. 

          Code Black was on the outskirts of the city of Los Angeles in a labyrinthine art gallery complex in the business district, having just hit the city perhaps fifteen minutes before. Maybe six minutes before they had approached this gallery building, a primary target because it was long suspected of being a haven for Code Fives. It had been one of the buildings on Michael's very short target list before he had left, and he had been right to put it there, because now it was a battleground.

          The flashlight had once again been the telltale sign, awakening five of them from sleep to paranoid fear. Unfortunately for the squad, it had been done accidentally and they had been forced to fight before they were prepared. Now they spaced out on the gallery's top floor, trying to keep between their targets and the exits, lest one get away and alert any other cell that their network had been discovered, deep-sixing all we had worked for.

          Growling with irritation, Derek shoved his target backward, then fired the fatal round. The subsequent explosion shook paintings from the walls, causing them to crash and shatter in an outward spiral of glass and wood. Turning to avoid the debris, he scoped the situation out further. Still anyone's fight.

_If we had this night together   
If we had a moment to ourselves   
If we had this night together_

Then we'd be unstoppable 

Jason was in a brawl with another target, trying to handle him with a tazer long enough to actually kill the leech. They were going back and forth, back and forth, trading blows. Neither was giving an inch on position, and they had been at this for several minutes now. Jason just couldn't find his opening but he was more than willing to wait for for it. He held firm with the tenacity no one else could duplicate. 

Finally, he flared up the tazer, getting off a short blast right in his target's arm. The man cried out in pain, then struck out blindly. Jason went backward, still holding on, and the two of them tumbled down the flight of stairs leading to the gallery door, striking with the audible sounds of wood against flesh and bone. Jason scrambled for the tazer, holding the trigger down and not caring where he landed a charge anymore as the two of them went down, fighting for control.

His head stinging from contact with the stairs, it hit the glass entry door as they finally could fall no further. Jason gave one last blast with the tazer, the Code Five staying down on top of him. He relented, then reached for his gun and fired a shot into the back of the man's head. The explosion fractured the safety glass above Jason's head, but he dusted the ashes off of himself and steadily climbed to his feet, with still more work left undone.  
  
Do you think that this is right or is it really wrong   
I know that this is what we've been wanting   
And all this burning in my soul, it fills up to my throat   
It fills up till my heart is breaking 

Lan and Chloe were dealing with two other – and hopefully final – adversaries. Unfortunately, their combat had disintegrated to the point where you use anything you can get your hands on as a weapon. Lan ducked a thrown vase and heard it shatter behind her, then hit her attacker in the face with the staff she was carrying. He stumbled backward into a desk, and she followed him down, her hand around his throat as she fired. The explosion blitzed the computer in the corner, thankfully not starting a fire but leaving some impressive scorch marks. She pulled her hand from the ashes.

Chloe yelled for help as her target got away from her. Whether he was desperate, stupid, crazy or all three was impossible to say, but he bolted from her range, and anyone else's range. He went to the window, through the window, glass shattering as he jumped and headed straight for the ground two stories below.

Derek, closest to the window, holstered his weapon and ran to the window. Clearing some remaining glass out of the way, before anyone could tell him not to, he followed the Code Five down, leaving his teammates to only watch as he disappeared from view, potentially falling to his own injury, but it didn't matter anymore.  
  
If we had this night together   
If we had a moment to ourselves   
If we had this night together

_Then we'd be unstoppable_

Having shifted into appropriate position, Derek hit the asphalt outside the gallery on his feet. It took him a moment to collect himself, but he turned in pursuit of his target, drawing the Ehrlich he was carrying and clicking back the safety with a determination I would have been proud of if I had been present. 

          The Code Five was leaving blood on the pavement as he desperately tried to escape, having no idea that he was even being pursued or perhaps not caring. Before he could get to the mouth of the alley, Derek fired and hit him twice in the back with a pair of accurately placed carbon-tipped rounds. He stood firm in the face of the explosion, which hit him like a windstorm as the target turned to ashes.

          As he stood there, Jason, Lan and Chloe emerged in a panic from the gallery's entry door. The tremor began to die down, and with it still present in the night, he turned to face all three of them with a determined set of his jaw. "Is everyone okay?" he asked, without a moment's hesitation or disturbance. They nodded, silently affirming that they had won this fight, no matter how violent, to secure this safe house. 

_  
Now we can both learn   
Somehow you'll see it's all we have   
Love, it keeps us together _

_And I need love_

Feeling like the survivor that he was, Derek followed his teammates back into the building, to pick up the pieces of what remained. There would be more in the future but right now all that was left here was ashes and the shattered remains of what had once been a simple coexistant peace, replaced by the turbulent unrest of modern life.

          I returned to CTU and to my operations team, looking pissed off and restless. Or so Matt said when he laid eyes on me as I put my gun back in the drawer. I closed the drawer, hung up my jacket, and asked what was going on, but nobody answered me. They were all looking at me. They've known me for years, and they reacted accordingly.

          "What happened?" Mark asked, looking appalled.

          "The raid was botched by the INS," I explained. "We got him but nothing substantial. He's more terrified than cooperative, since INS beat the crap out of him."

          "What?" Lex chimed in.

          "We found him and turned him over to INS for a few minutes while they cleared some interrogation space for me. The agent that had him in custody took that as license to beat him up pretty good. He's coughing up blood in the infirmary and they've got the guy on aggravated assault charges. Jack is furious."

          "He should be," Kevin insisted, and I nodded. 

          Matt had dropped his paperwork and was looking at the main floor with amazement in his eyes. "What the hell is going on out there?"

          I reached for my bottle of water on my desk. "When you find out, let me know."


	6. Hurt Me, Hold Me

**11:06 P.M. Wednesday**

          It had been four hours and thirty-seven minutes since the duty shift began and none of us had bothered, aside from the bottled water, to stop and eat, drink or rest. With things still getting sorted out – Mason was yelling on the phone at somebody from INS, as they tried to come to terms – and Tony's team back from their exam run, my ops team was dismissed for a fifteen-minute lunch break. I sat in the break room drinking yet another really big Mountain Dew.

          Big mistake.

          Tony walked in and called us all to attention. "They just had an attack on the 101st Airborne. Pentagon says it's one of our own."

          I choked on my soda, sending it back up into my throat. Quickly, I swallowed, then followed it with another hit. Closing up the bottle and leaving it there on the table, together with Matt, Mark, Lex, Kevin and Paula, I ran back onto the main ops floor. Fox News was on our major vid screen and Shepard Smith was giving details to our horrified CTU staff. Right now I wasn't even in the mood to make one of my many jokes about how he didn't sleep. I just stood there staring.

          "… The suspect in custody is a Muslim-American who may have been disgruntled…"

          I shot a glance at Matt, Mark and Kevin, who were all showing the same emotion I was: pure mortification and anger, mixed with a certainty that this was our job. We couldn't do it for the guys all the way over in Iraq, of course, but it was our job to handle domestic terrorism so that situations like this didn't happen here. Still listening to Shepard, we raced back to our workstations because we knew that there would be operations going up again, and quickly. I swore as I was reaffixing my headset; things had just gotten very personal around CTU.

Send me an angel 

_Send me an angel_

_Right now, right now_

_Send me an angel…_

          "All right," I yelled over the volume of the news channel and the unrest, "I want all available ops teams ready to go, we are making a full security sweep of the city. Ops teams Delta and Epsilon, stand by for instant action … everybody else, gear up and you launch in ten minutes!"

          People started obeying my orders, running to get their weapons and equipment, team leaders scrambling their teams in orderly and efficient fashion to make it back out into the field. Kevin, Lex, Paula and even Mark were clearing their dockets, bringing up their op-services software and selecting sweep zones for each field team. Since I had ordered two teams to hold back in case another raid or something happened, one of which was Jack's elite Team Delta, my boss approached me as I was checking my own software, preparing to run op-serv hands-on again for the first time in a while.

          "What happened with the Frenchman?" I asked. I'd gotten a little out of him, but not much – possible, not probable, locations, but he was basically scared to death. There was still a turf war going on over who kept custody. Jack exhaled. "Jackson went over to INS to talk to him, but I wouldn't hold out hope."

          I nodded, looking at my operations map where the locations the French national had suggested were marked with blue. "I'll make sure to clear those areas."

          "We'll stand by in case you get a hit." He looked over my shoulder at my panel. "You've got everything under control?"

          "Yeah. Don't worry about it."

          The teams had formed up, and I dropped into my chair as Matt issued them their standing orders and patrol zones: threat assessment, high alert. I was not at my usual station, instead taking the forwardmost one; when running op-serve we kept each controller separated so there was no chance of orders getting crossed or anything like that. Lex was back at our shared station over my shoulder and to my right, while Paula was over my shoulder to my left, and Kevin and Mark were at my back. Matt had his own station not too far from Paula. They would all be near me when I started needing them. As the teams headed out, we geared up and got into play.

Do you believe in heaven above 

_Do you believe in love_

_Don't tell me a lie  
Don't be false or untrue_

_It all comes back to you_

"Team Beta, op-serv online, acknowledge." My fingers were flying over the keys as I isolated the portion of the city map that Team Beta had been assigned to cover. It was brought up onto my screen and I was able to examine it in much greater detail. Looking at the text labels I started assessment in my head even as Steve Claire's voice came back in my ear: "Team Beta acknowledges op-serv online. Good to have you with us, Brittany."

          "Good to have you with me," I echoed. "I'm bringing up your target list now. Do you have it?"

          "We have it." I brought up the team's target list on the computer; earlier in the day we had come up with a list of locations that needed inspecting, and now it had been partitioned by team. Chances were Steve and the guys had seen some of them already, but now they'd be going into them rather than making recon. I had each target marked in red on my map. Red for the targets, blue for the possibles, green for cleared areas.

          "Confirm your first target for me." So far it was all procedure.

          "Warehouse district, buildings four and five, left side."

          "Confirmed. Good luck out there, Stephen." Again I went back to the map, isolating the two former factories that the team would be hitting shortly. I'd have to be their omnipresent spirit out there, giving them an assessment of the building, keeping them safe. I needed to know what was there before they did. Some days, you had to be ahead of yourself just to stay in the game. I kept typing, accessing satellites and prior reports and anything else I could think of.

Open fire on my burning heart 

_My defenses are down_

_I can't survive on my own_

Ten or so minutes passed. I had read the initial reports on the warehouse district that had suggested it as a target in the first place, taken a look at satellite photos, cross-referenced with previous case files, essentially racked our database for anything that might have anything to do with those two buildings. Never mind that I'd be doing it all again when they moved to another target. Steve had heard it all from me, and I was sure he'd rolled it off to the other team members. Rule one was to keep information moving at all times. The only time you stopped talking was when it meant somebody died.

          I heard the faint purring in the back of my audio stop, followed by several clicking noises. The engine had stopped and they were getting their weapons loaded. Sure enough, Steve came over the line and told me they'd made their target. They were going for the nearest building, building four, first. I could hear them moving up, taking up defensive assault positions. There was some silence, some nonverbal communication, as I hung on the line, and then his voice came back.

          "Op-security check, if you would."

          I checked. "You're a go."

          "Acknowledged. We are taking target."

          The first sounds of contact…

_Everyday we've all been lead astray_

_It's hard to be lucky in love…_

"I'll tell you this," Jason said, reaching behind himself to reload as the suburban went speeding on to its next target, "our girl knows to keep plenty of ammo."

          "You sound like a cheerleader," Derek quipped.

          "What? You make it sound like it's a bad thing," his friend said, slamming the clip home.

          "She hates cheerleaders."

          "Oh. Okay."

          "I mean, she _hates_ cheerleaders."

          Chloe interrupted from behind them: "And so, this one time at band camp…"

          Lan cut everyone else off. "Our next target is that former patrol station about twenty minutes out."

          Derek nodded, gripping the steering wheel tighter, and drove faster.


	7. For The Chance

**11:43 P.M. Wednesday**

          _"Stephen!"_ I nearly screamed his name into my microphone.

          Moments ago there had been complete fallout on my comm line and I'd lost all contact with Steve Claire and the other members of Tony Almeida's Team Beta. They had gotten the drop on somebody – no direct identification had yet been made, or at least confirmed back to me sitting at my station at CTU – and there had been an engagement. Then the building had literally started to collapse around all of them. The last sound I had on my recording was a massive one that could either have been a gunshot or a heavy fall.

          My pulse was racing and my heart threatened to break my chest. I forced myself to calm down and execute the capable leadership skills I was able to use. That's the thing: I'm a good enough leader, but it's partly because I don't draw the line between emotion and execution. I don't worry when I feel something. I worry when I don't. And right now I felt total fear and mortification that my entire ops team and any lead we might have had were all crushed dead underneath the remains of a warehouse.

Sealed with lies through so many tears  
Lost from within, pursuing the end  
I fight for the chance to be lied to again

            I continued to call his name as I went back to my work, preparing an emergency rescue plan with keystrokes and quick thinking. Nobody was answering me. This was not good. I should have checked the structural integrity, I should have been clairvoyant, I should have done something…__

          "Brittany?"

          "Tony?" I blurted, half-elated, half-confused. 

          "Steve got hit in the head, he's a little dazed," my team leader went on to explain, "I'm taking over communications."

          "Is everyone all right? What's going on out there?"

          "We're going to need some emergency backup. It's a cavern in here."

          "On the way." I searched the floor for Jack, then waved him over. "I need you to keep talking to me, Tony. Whatever happens, don't let the line go dead."

          "I don't plan on it."

          Jack came over and I told him that Tony needed an emergency backup team at their last known location. He said he would get on it and immediately started rounding up the operatives necessary. As for me, I started preparing my mobile command station kit, transferring the mission data to my laptop. It was customary on an emergency for the operative running op-serv to check the tapes, keep an eye on the overview, and work out the kinks. However, it was my responsibility to get out there in the field and save these guys. They trusted me and it was time to make it up to them.

You will never be strong enough 

_You will never be good enough_

_You were never conceived in love_

_You will never rise above_

"Is anybody hurt, Tony? Is everyone still alive?" I said as plugged my headphones into my mobile kit.

          "Yeah … from what I can see it's just some injuries. Steve got clocked by a beam, and I think there might be some others…"

          "All right, we're bringing medical backup with us. What about the objective?"

          "Brittany, if there's anybody left in here, they're disarmed, and they're probably dead."

          I let this soak in for a moment. "Acknowledged," I finally said, simple and specific. 

          Jack had rounded up some team members, so I threw operational command to Mark again and headed out the door. My mobile kit in my hand, my gun in its holster and my microphone still connected to the proper equipment, I raced down the corridor toward the exit, through the doors before anyone else and into the waiting van somebody had brought around. I couldn't shake the manic-perfectionist feeling that this was somehow my fault.

          "We're on our way," I told Tony, buckling my seat belt and resting my station on my lap. "We're coming for you."

They'll never see, I'll never be 

_I'll struggle on and on to feed this hunger_

_Burning deep inside of me_

There's nothing like trying to double-check your gun and drive at the same time. I'd done it a lot, having been taught how to properly multitask by Jack, who had done it a lot himself, and I had taught Derek how to do it. As he drove down the next street, he took one hand off the wheel, eased the firearm out of his jacket, examined it quickly, then put it back where it went. You could never check your gun enough times if you knew for certain it was probably going to be a big factor in whether or not you ever got to try that little manuever again.

          "I'd be prepared for safeguards," Lan was saying from the backseat. "It *is* a former highway patrol station."

          "What happened to it?" Jason asked.

          "They moved uptown."

          "I wonder why," Derek said sarcastically. 

          "I'm sure there weren't Code Fives in it then," Chloe appended gently.

          "You never know," Jason said. "I didn't ever think I was going to be saving the world."

          "Not the world," Lan said, echoing Sandra Bullock in _The Net_, one of her (and my) favorite films, "just our part of it."

          "Yeah, whatever. It's just good to know I mean something."

          Derek nodded, a sign to Jason that he agreed with the comment and was proud of his friend for that kind of attitude. He swung the car down another side street. They would reach their target in a matter of minutes. "Arm up," he said, and everyone went for their weapons. They didn't have to be told twice. You do this enough times, the hard part is _putting down_ the weapon.

But through my tears breaks a blinding light  
Birthing a dawn to this endless night  
Arms outstretched, awaiting me

          We arrived on the scene and I knew immediately it was going to be hell. It was a miracle any of this building was still standing. In retrospect I probably should have noticed that, but I bolted straight from the car with a medical kit right into the area. I had to kick in debris blocking in the door just to get in there, but I made it in. There was a massive gap in the floor and I suspected some of our guys (and some of theirs) had probably fallen through. It wasn't my concern to count heads right then; that would be later. I saw the remains of a stairway railing down the way, and I went for it.

          The steps and the pipe handrails were shaky under me, and I knew they themselves would probably give way at some point. Not wanting to risk it, I vaulted the railing and used it to drop the final couple of steps onto hard concrete. From my sheltered vantage point in the corner I couldn't see anyone, but I heard my team coming in above me and I started searching knowing they had my back. If I hurt myself at least there'd be somebody there to help me, unlike these guys.

          Nearest me I saw what appeared to be like it could be somebody, unfortunately buried under the remains of one part of the building. I didn't care. I rushed over and began pulling the remnants away, hoping honest to God I was going to find a person and not a corpse. I wouldn't be able to tell until it was too late to do anything about it.

Rest in me and I'll comfort you  
I have lived and I died for you  
Abide in me and I vow to you  
I will never forsake you

          Finally the last of the debris gave way under my hands, and I reached down and grabbed Steve's hand. I checked for a pulse; he was still alive. I turned him over so he was on his back, trying not to aggravate any injuries he might have suffered in the fall. But he was looking at me with clear gray eyes, and he was breathing. I let out somewhere between a sob and a gasp and held him close to me, terrified of ever letting go.

          Somewhere else in the city, the four members of Code Black checked down the tunnelway, then went headlong into the darkness.


	8. To The Limit

**12:05 A.M. Thursday**

The blood ran down my arm and pooled at my wrist, running up against the bottom of my hand. I wiped it off and traced it back to my elbow. Rolling up my sleeve, I quickly threw a Band-Aid over the wound and went back to jobs that couldn't be fixed with Band-Aids to begin with. I pushed my way out the main entrance and crossed the now debris-covered asphalt back to where the CTU van and the ambulance that had arrived shortly later were parked. It looked like a crisis center, which I guess it was.

          Tony was standing, talking to Jack. He had been pretty badly tossed around but seemed to be okay, just trying to brush dust and debris off of his clothes and deal with the few small wounds that had accrued. That was good. I've worked with Tony many times, and he's saved me many times, and we don't drink together or anything, but I do respect the man immensely. 

          Steve was sitting on the edge of the van's door area, holding an ice pack to the back of his head. Stephen Claire is one of those people who wouldn't complain if you'd dropped the whole building on him (which maybe it had dropped on him in some respect), but he did have a quite nasty concussion. I walked over, sat down next to him, folded my hands in my lap and watched some of our responding team help the paramedics cart out the not-so-lucky suspects in body bags.

          "How's the head?" I asked randomly, a completely asinine question since it was fairly obvious.

          He cocked his head and looked at me. "I'm fine." Pause. "Thank you for getting me out of there, however."

          "It's my job, Steve. And even if it weren't I owe you one for the Michelle op."

          "No you don't."

          "Oh, yeah I do. We got mauled, but you made us make progress." I smiled at him, cocking a half-grin. "Besides, come on, you have more tenure than I do."

          He laughed shakily. "Whatever."

          I looked over the top of his head at Jack issuing orders to those of us who were outside the building. He was saying that we were going to rotate Team Beta out with Team Epsilon, one of my backup teams. That was fine by me; it made sense not to send the rumbled-up guys out on another run and Epsilon was fresh. I didn't have any need for them yet anyway. I got on my comm kit and got a hold of Lex, telling him to give Team Epsilon the remainder of Team Beta's objectives. He told me he'd get on it. It's amazingly simple to pick up after a crisis happens; you just never see it coming is the thing.

          We were now into the next day. I hadn't slept since 6:10 the previous morning.

          Derek stood on one side of the door, weapon level, prepared to execute the task. Across the doorframe from him, Jason nodded, and the two of them began mentally counting down from three as we had a habit of doing.

          In the middle of his countdown a sound stopped him. Acting only on instinct, he spun, bringing the weapon up in the direction of the sound. He was very grateful to be able to put it down when he realized it was a friend that was approaching. None other than Special Agent Ben Carroway, one of the three people that was supposed to be anywhere but there, cleared the fence and carefully approached, producing his own weapon.

          "You're not supposed to be here," Derek whispered as the older man approached.

          "No, but I got out of it," was Ben's only explanation. "I got the brief from Leticia. You ready?"

          "Just about to take it," Jason interrupted.

          Ben nodded, taking up position behind Derek, across from Jason and Chloe, next to Lan. "Let's do it."

          Jason took in the door, which splintered and gave under his perfectly executed manuever, and stepped into the darkness. Everyone else followed right behind him. On a two-count, the lights got flipped on, and the battlefield came into the yellow haze of a couple almost-dead light bulbs. With one more glance at each other, the five of them began to break apart and secure their ground. If there were Code Fives on the premises, they'd move away from the light. Or so the methodology went.

          Jason was the first to engage the enemy, narrowly avoiding a gunshot by diving for cover, causing everyone else to shift into a heightened state of awareness. The enemy had never been armed with guns before. This made things serious. Derek reacted by trying to get off a shot at Jason's attacker, but it didn't connect. He waited for the nod from Jason that told him the situation was under control before he backed off and went his own way.

          Ben was covering Chloe, and Lan had Derek taken care of. The one problem was where the hell the targets were hiding, and if they could get to them in time.

          I knelt amidst the rubble, headset firmly on as I began doing a forensic sweep of ground zero.

          "Why are you still there?" Lex's voice crackled in my ear.

          "Two words," I said, "Actually, a name: Andrew Goodman."

          "What? Who?"

          "From the film _Murder In Mississippi_," I elaborated, moving from one section to another with weary grace. We probably wouldn't find much in the way of why these suspects had been using this building as a base, but we had to at least try. "He was killed standing up for what he believed in. All he had to do was lie and say he was a racist and they would have let him live, but he said he wasn't one and they shot him. I'm not very good at that kind of dilemma either."

          "I guess you still know how to bring the film references after all this time."

          "Damn straight." I smiled just a little as I moved some debris to get a better opening. "How's everything?"

          "Mark's doing fine." He emphasized the last word, one step ahead of me already.

          "Good. I needed to hear that." I moved a bit closer and shined my flashlight into the open space, and then I yelled for somebody to go find Jack and bring him down immediately.

          "Jason! Coming your way!" Derek yelled, about all he had time to do except get the hell out of the way of the oncoming target.

          His own attacker missed him as a result at the same time another one slammed into Jason. Waiting for his right moment, Jason fought the choke hold long enough to carefully pop a bullet into the Code Five's abdomen at close range. The resulting explosion blew out the window behind him and startled Derek's target long enough for Derek to get the jump and terminate him as well. During that explosion he was already moving forward. Two down.

          "How many more are there?"

          "At least four," Ben called from behind cover, readying a shot of his own.

          His bullet went wide, but it was meant to; it pierced an already unstable shelving unit and sent the metal collapsing down on another nearby target. The second shot dusted him, the blowback leaving scorch marks on the near door and flash burns on the carpet. Slightly pleased with himself, Ben nonetheless was undeterred from the ultimate goal. Of all the members of Code Black, he seemed to be the most dissatisfied. Always trying to be better than he was, although he was good enough. Like he was trying to atone for something.

          Meanwhile, Chloe misdirected a target right into the path of Lan's waiting shot, and the explosion shook the building again. Make that three more targets. This was a battle they might just be able to win.

          Jack and I shared an uneasy glance. He held the flashlight steady as I wedged the crowbar into the appropriate position. As close friends, surrogate family members, and mentor and student, we were both inextricably bound to whatever was in front of us. Finally, the paneling gave with a rough sound, and I reached in and pulled it back the rest of the way.

          "Is that … blueprints of some sort?" Jack asked me worriedly as I removed the contents of the hidden safe that had – and had been meant to – survive the building.

          I unfolded the paper. "It's the plans to…"

          "Plans to what?" 

          "Jack, I think these are the plans to the Port's main facility." When I looked at Jack, I looked at him with the fear and concern I had once had as a young rookie, the look in my eyes that I needed him to take me by the hand and convince me the end of the world was not at hand. "They're not trying to get in. They're trying to keep us from getting out."


	9. Final Clarity

**12:26 A.M. Thursday**

          "What the hell is happening here?"

          As I once again bent over my mobile station, I looked at Jack with the idea that he had spoken an apt sentiment. Steve was in the van with us, as was Chris Gautreau, who sat in the passenger seat looking over his shoulder at me. Tony was supervising what remained of the rescue-recovery operation, because it was obvious that in minutes we'd need everyone for a tactical counter-operation, and nothing we'd just done would matter that much at all.

          "It all makes sense," Chris was saying. "They blow up the Port's command-control, they scramble all the port traffic and I bet you it throws traffic of all sorts for a loop by default. They catch us off guard in our own home. We become powerless where we should be safe. Damn."

          "It's not happening on my watch," Steve was saying.

          I glanced at him. "Steve, you were just hit in the head with a really big beam."

          "And maybe it's made me more self-aware," he groused, nonplussed.

          I stared at Steve for a long moment more, then asked where the hell I put my gun. He handed it over to me from where it laid between the two of us, and I shoved it back into the holster. "If we're going to do this, let's do it."

          Jack nodded, then started yelling for everyone to get rounded up and back to CTU. Chances were, once there we still wouldn't have much an idea as to what was happening, but at least we'd have more equipment to get us through it.

          We arrived back with more expediency than it had taken us to get there, mostly because panic and an apprehension toward the unknown make you drive a lot faster (and worse, in my opinion). The guys from Team Beta who were shaken up were ordered by Jack to go take a rest in the break room; unsurprisingly, Tony went straight back to work, and so did Steve, over my (and others') continued protests. I headed right back over to Matt, Mark, Lex, Kevin and Paula. Seeing the look on my face, Mark yanked off his headset and stared at me like I'd just told him Oasis was a good band.

          "What happened?"

          "Everyone's okay, except we lost the targets," I started. "They're all crushed remains right now."

          Lex winced.

          "That's not everything," Matt said slowly, reading my eyes.

          I nodded. "We discovered, in a hidden safe, plans for the Port's C and C."

          "You think they were planning to take it out?" Kevin asked.

          "I don't know. If there was any evidence of such a thing, I'd say we should have found it, but I'm not sure what everyone else found, not to mention that most of it was probably obliterated in the collapse. But we're acting as if that's the intended target, yeah." I paused, taking a short breath. "That means I need actionable material in my hands as soon as you can get it to me."

          "We're working on it," Mark told me, even then getting started.

          "Jack, when are we going?" I yelled.

          "I want to be out there before one."

          "That's not much time!"

          He nodded, looking me in the eyes. "Do what you can." That was, after all, all he'd ever asked of me, and everyone else who'd ever had the honor of serving under him. I nodded, more to myself than to my boss and friend, and turned to regard my station, untouched by the chaos I had left it for. I quickly saved and shut down the previous operation file and cleared my slate. No use dwelling on the past, even the very recent variety.

          I took a long look at the duty roster. Jack's Team Delta would be in on the operation for sure, as would the hard-line members of Team Beta who were able to go, and maybe even perhaps Epsilon. He wouldn't leave the ranks depleted, but defending the Port's central nervous system wasn't a small job. Mason would probably be left with a handful of people to run base ops with, and the rest of them would be taking up tactical positions and launching some sort of counter-insurgence, or whatever we came up with in the next fifteen minutes.

          Matt came over and handed me wire copy. "The latest traffic reports from the Port."

          "And I'm getting a location analysis now," Paula chimed in.

          "Thank you," I told them both. "We just might pull this off yet."

          "Hey, that's our job," Lex quipped. "We are CTU agents, doers of the impossible where the future of the country is concerned."

          I suppressed a laugh, because it wasn't really the time or place. And probably wouldn't be for quite some time. Instead, I asked him to hand me our file on coastal defenses. Paperwork, while reviled, can make or break you. It reminded me of a rather mundane moment in my first couple of months. Tony had been stuck in traffic, leaving Jack's mission planning team without their second in command and all the information he had with him. I had been drafted to check his backup systems, and after that to go over the intel review until he got there twenty minutes later. Those were some of the busiest twenty minutes of my life, but that was nothing compared to this.

          I glanced up. "Hey, Kevin."

          "Yeah."

          "Do me a favor, go ask Jack exactly who we're sending on this one."

          Kevin nodded. "I imagine it's going to be a pretty long list."

          "I do, too, but I'd like to know it." 

          As he walked off, I reached for my cell phone and hit the fourth speed-dial button. I had cell numbers for everybody on the squad, but Chloe was in charge of field communications, so I dialed her number first. I got her voice mail. No sense leaving a message. I put the phone back. They were handling things themselves. I don't know why I felt slightly disappointed at the idea.

          Kevin came back over, and I gave him my full attention. "He's taking Tony, Steve, Chris, a couple other field guys. About a dozen of them. He doesn't have his complete roster yet, but he'll make sure you get a copy when he does."

          "All right, that's fine. Thanks, Kevin."

          "No problem." He clapped me on the shoulder. "You're doing a great job today."

          "Really now?" I was somewhat surprised. "Thank you for the compliment."

          "You're earning it," he tossed over his shoulder as he headed back to work.

          I decided to make good on that compliment as I sorted out all the information my team members had given me and processed it all into its proper place. 

          A few minutes more and Jack was calling his team meeting. My team members and I grabbed our stuff and proceeded to the conference room where we met up with the agents Jack had chosen to make the operation work. We'd be briefing them on what we knew and hopefully getting a clearer idea of the things we didn't quite know. I took my seat between Jack and Lex and examined all of us. We were all sleep-deprived, running on adrenaline, but we were all damned determined to get it done.

          Mark had the plans on the table and was going over them one more time, while Matt was delivering our final report.

          "It goes without saying that we recommend defensive positions," he was saying. "Technically it's only one building, but we don't know if this strike could involve targets of opportunity. We don't even know if it's going to happen anytime soon. Our objective, with that in mind, has to be to secure the facility, to investigate it for terrorist contact, to prepare it for defense. We're not treating this as an active engagement mission. There's too much uncertainty for that."

          Tony nodded. "But we'll be prepared for engagement anyway."

          "We're always prepared for engagement," Chris pointed out.

          "What's the probability of engagement on this?" Steve asked.

          "Minimal to possible," Kevin explained. "Like Matt said, we don't have a timeline here, but you never know."

          "That's right, you don't," Jack concurred. "Who's got the wheel on this?"

          Silence for a moment. Finally, knowing what my heart was telling me, I spoke up.

          "I'm running op-serve on this one."

          Tony looked over at me. "You want it?"

          "Yeah, I want it." I swallowed hard. "This is my chance to set things right."


	10. Take The Line

**12:56 A.M. Thursday**

          The plan was in motion. The team had arrived on the ground at the Port of Los Angeles two minutes ago. As for me, the whole of CTU's operational floor had become my station, and I paced through it, examining the information monitors and the backup staff left to me, but mostly, mostly I was just seeing it in my mind's eye.

          "Agents report." My voice was soft and devoid of emotion. I had locked myself down with another session of playing Paul Oakenfold over my headphones. Now in my ear I listened to all of the team members check in with me. Jack. Tony. Steve. Chris. People that were not just my co-workers, they had come to be vital components of the staff and people I trusted with my life. Now I had theirs in my hands. For their sake, I prayed that I knew what I was doing. For hadn't it been only a year, maybe less, maybe more, that I had been a scared young operative sent out to London who came back with blood on her hands?

          I had to stop thinking like this.

          "Stand by for your op-sec clearance." I turned to another monitor and checked the overhead scan that should have picked up any other movement in the area, recognizing my team members as green blips, but nothing else. "You're secure. No presence detected."

          "Acknowledged." Jack's voice. He always did like to be the communications handler on his own operations. "Proceeding with first phase."

          "First phase is a green light."

          I heard them moving and closed my eyes, trying to hold out for them.

_Look, you're standing alone, standing alone  
However I should have known, I should have known  
Never before, never again   
You will ignore, I will pretend   
Never before, never again  
You will ignore, I will pretend _

Out at the Port, squad members began to swarm the perimeter of the command and control building. The three-story building is the nerve center for the place. Take it, and you've got nothing left for coastal traffic control, period. Now the dozen staff members, weapons ready and nerves on end, were carefully casing its limits. I could hear their hissed commands, the sound of their firearms being checked repeatedly. In my mind it was all one column of noise in the deafening silence.

"Make sure we've got people on all the hard points," Jack was saying, using the term we threw around the office for strategic positions with the most critical locations. His voice resonated in my ear: "We're secure. Go to second phase."

"Acknowledged. Stand by for security check." I glanced at my monitor again, even as I was on another screen pulling up the floor plan for the building itself. Still no other activity. "You're secure."

"Acknowledged." He was breathing hard, but it only lasted a heartbeat. "Second phase is in action."

"Second phase is a green light."

I heard Jack yelling for Steve and a list of other agents to form up with him. My indicator monitor showed them moving from their positions at the building's rear, circling around to head toward the front. The six of them took up positions on either side of the front access door. There was a moment of minor silence – I presume for Steve to do his usual breaking and entering with finesse – and then I saw the six green dots moving over the threshold into the building itself. I held my breath until they were all inside._  
  
In your world, you're alone in your place   
You're alone in your world, you're alone in your place  
How you said you never would leave me alone  
How you said you never would leave me alone _

The six-man team inside split into three groups of two, in order to cover the building's three floors that much faster. Each of them would have a communications handler now, as well as the team remaining outside, so I would have four people talking to me on a regular basis. That meant four times the expediency. Four times the risk. I could handle it. I had to handle it.

"Perimeter team, check in," I said to be safe.

"We're all still breathing," Chris informed me. "Everything cool?"

"Like ice." It sounded cold and dead. 

Meanwhile, on the inside, the interior teams were making their initial sweeps. If there was any sign that terrorists had been there or were planning something, they would find it. The question was if they would find it in time. I heard Jack kick in another door and proceed into what, according to my schematics, was another data storage room. Port security knew we were there, but I didn't want to raid the place. That wouldn't do us any good. If the data had any secrets, we'd have to get them some other way.

"Anything?" I asked nonetheless.

"Nothing yet." He paused. "You have anything?"

I checked my screens. "Nothing."

But there had to be _something_._  
  
Now you're just walking away, walking away  
When you said you always would stay, always would stay  
Never before, never again   
You will ignore, I will pretend  
Never before, never again  
You will ignore, I will pretend_

This went on for another fifteen minutes, which was all it took for the interior teams to sweep the floor. Even before everyone pulled together for the final consensus, the results did not look promising. The more and more disheartened my team got out in the field, the more frustrated I got trying to help them toward a goal that clearly wasn't there.

No one ever interfered with the perimeter team. There wasn't even a shadow of activity around the Port's command and control. Still the team remained on alert, not willing to accept that it could be this easy. Chris kept them sharp and ready for a sudden threat, because we'd had plenty of those in our time. However, no such problem emerged, and they fell silent.

None of the interior teams reported anything remotely suspicious. They hadn't turned up any bombs, surveillance devices, suspicious materials, trace evidence – you name it, they'd been looking for it with a rapid-fire expediency. It wasn't the expertise of our criminology staff, but it was thorough. Thorough enough to convince us all as the team regrouped outside the building that there was really nothing there to be standing there for._  
  
In your world, you're alone in your place  
You're alone in your world, you're alone in your place  
How you said you never would leave me alone  
How you said you never would leave me alone  
Never before, never again  
You will ignore, I will pretend_

I heard the frustration and weariness in my superior officer's voice, in the sharp intakes of his breath. Like me, he was driven to do the right thing. He had to do it; it was in his nature. When he came up against a wall, it became an almost obsession. He had to conquer the wall and he had to succeed. To have been blindsided, if you could call it that, did not sit well with Jack Bauer. I knew that he knew he wasn't alone in that feeling.

"And we're sure about this?" he asked, just wanting to hear it said.

Chris nodded. "There's nobody here. Not to say that means there never will be, but … not now."

"There's no telling what an in-depth search might turn up," Steve replied. "But given the time clock we're working with, I think we'd be better off if we focus our immediate resources to more immediate concerns and take another run at this when the conflict atmosphere dies down."

"I want to take a second look at the evidence results from the warehouse. I know there's nothing there, but I don't think we did this for nothing. It's maybe just wrong place, wrong time." I knew Chris was trying to sound conciliatory, even though he meant what he said.

"You do that, then." Jack exhaled, and his voice startled me. "Brittany, what are you thinking?"_  
  
In your world, you're alone in your place  
You're alone in your world, you're alone in your place  
How you said you never would leave me alone  
How you said you never would leave me alone_

Silence hung oppressively over the communications channels. I took a deep breath, hung my head, closed my eyes, and after a moment of eternal torment, let it out.

"Shut it down," I said. "There's nothing left."

I cut the communication line, throwing my headset down onto the desk. A couple buttons more and all the monitors faded out. I was left as I had begun, standing alone, set in darkness.


	11. Threat Matrix

**1:34 A.M. Thursday**

          We all sat around in a numb silence, trying to figure out where we'd gone wrong. The one personality trait all of us shared was that we really, really didn't like being wrong. It ate away at us until we rectified the error. That's what we were going to do, even if it killed us. Maybe it was the time, maybe it was the stress, but we were not thinking straight, not anymore.

          "It doesn't mean there won't be an attack," Chris said, spreading his hands on the table to indicate the infinite possibilities. "It just means there hasn't been an attack yet."

          "It was still a waste of time," I said, a little harsher than I would have liked.

          Jack looked over at me. "It's not your fault. We acted on the evidence."

          "Right, right, I'm sorry." I exhaled. "What do we do now? Reorganize our objectives?"

          "Yeah, that's what we have to do." Mark was nodding. "I'll get right on it. Somebody want to get me a news update?"

          "I'll take care of it," Kevin said.

          "Everybody meets back here in ten minutes," Jack announced, dismissing us. I stood and started walking out of the room, but he grabbed me by the arm and turned me around. "Don't be so hard on yourself," he told me. He was speaking to me as my friend, mentor and surrogate father now, not as my boss. "You're not responsible for everything that doesn't go perfect around here. I hate it when you beat up on yourself like this."

          I nodded. "I know, Jack … I just want everything to be perfect, and when it doesn't I want to know what I can do to make it right."

          He smiled slightly, embracing me. "What you do is you go out there and try it again."

          "Yes, sir." As we pulled back, I snapped off a quick salute to one of my dearest friends in the world, then turned and pushed through the conference room door. "I'll give it my best."

          Following me, Jack smirked. "That's all I ever ask for."

          I laughed a little as I walked back to my station and dropped into my chair. Everyone else had beaten me there and they were working with that same expedient devotion. Mark handed me something he'd come across and everything else just receded into the back of my mind. Still, I did not forget.

_When this began  
I had nothing to say  
And I'd get lost in the nothingness inside of me  
I was confused  
And I let it all out to find that I'm  
Not the only person with these things in mind  
Inside of me  
But all the vacancy the words revealed  
Is the only real thing that I've got left to feel  
Nothing to lose  
Just stuck hollow and alone  
And the fault is my own  
And the fault is my own_

          "I'm not complaining," Jason made a note of saying as he sat in the suburban again, reloading his gun, "But you know, you've gotta wonder how many of these guys we have to kill to make a statement."

          "You'd be surprised," Chloe said. "I looked at the stuff they sent over from England. It's crazy over there. We have it easy compared to them."

          "And you're telling me nobody knows about it there either?" Jason said. "No suspicions, no panic…"

          "Not yet, anyway." She nodded. "It's probably just a matter of time. They got to it late. We're early."

          "I've always liked being punctual," Lan said. "Unlike some people." She was looking at Derek, who rolled his eyes. "Hey, I'm improving."

          "Yeah, and so are we," Jason interrupted. "Where's our next target?"

          "We're working on that," Ben told him. "Chances are, they're pulling back their forces for one strike or defense. They know we're here, their strategy's going to change."

          Derek nodded, fire behind his eyes. "We haven't come this far to not go all the way." The words came out of him with a conviction he had not felt since he had found his brother's dead body in the bathroom not so long ago. He knew inside of him then that the world spun on a different axis from the one we had always believed. It was all a lie. This was the truth.

  
_I want to heal  
I want to feel  
What I thought was never real  
I want to let go of the pain I've held so long  
Erase all the pain 'til it's gone  
I want to heal  
I want to feel  
Like I'm close to something real  
I want to find something I've wanted all along  
Somewhere I belong_

I was back in the conference room on time, with a new list of objectives. Jackson, Mason and Jack were all listening to me and Mark give a threat evaluation and tell them what we thought had to be done. Only Jack could see how hard the time and toil of this day, the stakes that had been placed upon my shoulders, were hitting me. Not even a legal adult yet, and I was being asked to make decisions about other people's lives. 

"We'll put a team at Division to oversee operations," Mark was saying. "It's a safeguard, in the event that any of these stagnant operations actually do go live and we need to suddenly reevaluate our standing. They'll be able to reassign the teams in the field and respond to any situation as well."

"Got it," Tony was saying. "I'll take the guys I've got and we'll head over."

"We also have a list of places we'll need defended if our previous battle philosophy pans out," Mark said. "Take that with you. Until then, we're spreading our teams around to probable terrorist suspect locales and central installations that will need to be checked and monitored. Information is on your stations." He looked across at me. "Is that everything?"

"Yeah," I said, with a dutiful nod but a resigned voice. "That's everything."

Mark quoted an ancient prayer from his eidetic memory as we all gathered our belongings and prepared for the next operational wave. "And may the grace of God be with you in all the empty places you must walk."  
  
_And I've got nothing to say  
I can't believe I didn't fall right down on my face  
I was confused  
Looking everywhere only to find that it's  
Not the way I had imagined it all in my mind  
So what am I  
What do I have but negativity  
'Cause I can't justify the   
Way everyone is looking at me  
Nothing to lose  
Nothing to gain hollow and alone  
And the fault is my own   
The fault is my own_  
  
          All Derek could do was drive. It was torturously simple, just keeping the vehicle speeding toward its destination. Behind him he could hear Ben, Chloe and Lan discussing the mission profile, but for some reason he chose to drown them out. It had become lines of rapid-fire statistics, probabilities, possibilities. The only thing he believed now was the cold proof right before his eyes, of which he had very little.

"It's an open area," Chloe was saying. "A relatively small open area, but a wide open area. We're talking about no cover, period."

"That's the reasoning," Ben cut in with experienced solidarity. "They want a showdown with us where nobody can hide."

"We'll get slaughtered!"

"You're missing the point here," he told her slowly. "If we can't hide, neither can they."

Pause.

"She's right, Ben," Lan interrupted. "What kind of losses are we looking at."

And the veteran agent hung his head for a moment before looking at her evenly. "There are going to be losses."  
  
_I will never know  
Myself until I do this on my own  
And I will never feel  
Anything else until my wounds are healed  
I will never be  
Anything 'til I break away from me  
And I will break away  
I'll find myself today_

Jack, Tony and their respective teams passed me by as I brought my station online. We were operating blind, and we were extremely conscious about that. But these were men and women more than human, and I had no doubt that they could succeed. In my eyes, Jack Bauer and the people he trusted were almost immortal. I couldn't see a life without Jack there to guide me. It was just an impossibility, and I didn't know if it was also a weakness. I didn't want to find out.

As he walked by, my boss and mentor gripped my shoulder reassuringly. I looked up at him, sure I had the fear of God in my eyes and water pressing behind them. "I believe in you, Brittany," he told me softly. "Don't give up on me now."

"I won't," I promised, voice breaking anyway. 

Jack just barely smiled. "I know you won't," he said quietly, and then he had to go. I watched him leave, knowing that I had discovered things about myself I didn't like today, but nothing could amount to the feeling of helplessness yet faith I felt stirring inside of me as everything moved forward one more time.  
  
_I want to heal  
I want to feel  
What I thought was never real  
I want to let go of the pain I've held so long_

_Erase all the pain 'til it's gone  
I want to heal  
I want to feel  
Like I'm close to something real  
I want to find something I've wanted all along  
Somewhere I belong_

The suburban stopped outside their projected combat zone, the remaining members of Code Black checked their resolve and self-confidence for the final time, looking at each other and the target plaza. There was no turning back, not for any of us, not anymore, not after what we had all done, and they knew it. They knew it more than I did, because they had done things I could never do. And they were about to make the leap again.

"Everybody armed?" Ben said, breaking the silence. "Technically ready?"

Various mumbled agreement. Nobody felt like making sentences.

Chloe checked her earpiece. "Leticia's heading up to the ops room now. She'll be on-line with us in a minute or two."

"We'll need her," Ben said. "Any questions, any final…" His words died, trailing off.

Derek was the first person to shatter the silence. "That leaves one more thing."

_  
I want to heal  
I want to feel like I'm  
Somewhere I belong  
I want to heal  
I want to feel like I'm  
Somewhere I belong  
Somewhere I belong_

          My phone rang, and standing there, watching everyone that remained so much more put together than I ever could, I answered it with a numb briskness. "Agent Frederick, go ahead."

          "It's me." Derek's voice was sober, yet driven. "We're heading into another battle."

          "Good luck," I said. "Take care of yourselves."  
  


          "Brittany…" He hesitated. "We've done some planning. This is it. We may not get back alive."

          I froze and my heart literally stopped. "Are you sure about this?"

          "It's what it comes down to." My loyal friend and first recruit seemed resolved to his fate. "But listen … if we don't make it out of here, I want you to know that I appreciate everything you've done for us."

          "Don't thank me."

          "I wanted to say it. Just in case."

          "You're coming back," I reiterated. "You have to come back."

          He paused, silence on the line. "We'll try," he said. Then the line went dead, and I felt the wall around me crashing down in a million pieces.


	12. Even In Death

**1:58 A.M. Thursday**

          Blood ran into my mouth and I swallowed.

          Operations was a steadily moving zone of professional chaos. The news of the war was on every television screen in the place and we were processing more of it as quickly as we could handle. No report had come in from Jack and Tony in some time. Mason and Jackson were busy making the decisions. In the midst of it all I stood at my station, my throat constricted, a burning in my heart. I glanced to Kevin, who was working at my station feeding intel to crisis management, and put up two fingers. He nodded and I climbed the stairs to Jack's vacant office.

_You're too important for anyone  
You play the role of all you want to be_

I shut the door behind myself and moved inside. Jack's office is largely soundproof and that kept the bastion of below from pounding into my brain like shards of glass into an open wound. The numbness yet incredible pain was excruciating. The war on terrorism was my duty, and yet the war against the night was my destiny. I couldn't choose one over the other. I picked up the globe paperweight Jack always kept on his desk and gripped it. The world was on fire and I was going to fail part of it.

_  
But I, I know who you really are  
You're the one who cries when you're alone_

The paperweight hit the front door of Jack's locker head on with a resounding sound and bounced off, rolling onto the floor. As for me, I just screamed, a sound that could not possibly express my inconsolable, self-consuming anguish.

They were preparing for the end, feeling it coming down quickly on their shoulders. Without full strength, they would have to only be that much better, and there wasn't that much better to be.

Jason checked the Kevlar padding in his windbreaker one more time, then holstered his firearm. My second-in-command was being quiet and dedicated, knowing whatever he said wouldn't make anything much better for them tonight. The camera hidden in his watch came to life, lights on as if to say it was prepared to record the memories. Hopefully he would be able to come back and play them over like he always did._  
  
But where will you go  
With no one left to save you from yourself  
You can't escape  
You can't escape_

Standing near Jason, Derek collapsed his extendable staff and put it in the holster hanging at his side, turning off its tazer function. He was nervous, the muscles in his shoulders taut and locked. He couldn't come up with words, instead choosing to just force out several deep breaths. Despite everything he had seen there were always moments when he realized how far everything had come. Moments that made him more human than human._  
  
You think that I can't see right through your eyes  
Scared to death to face reality_

Derek closed his eyes and let the last wave of emotion break over him. It was time to let it go.

Ben gripped the big-bore CIB sidearm in one hand, slamming a clip into it with a resounding click. Hair was falling into his eyes and he brushed it back. He hadn't been in this big of a fight since Cortazar, Mexico, and he was grasping at whether or not he had the capacity to rise to the standard again. His eyes were dark, a storm in summer. He tried to hide the scars, but after a while…

_  
No one seems to hear your hidden cries  
You're left to face yourself alone_

He surveyed the rest of the fighting forces, perhaps the most eclectic group ever thrown together to save the world. If, indeed, that was what they succeeded in doing. Only time would tell. Time quickly expiring for all involved._  
  
But where will you go  
With no one left to save you from yourself_

Upstairs in Ops, Leticia powered up the tactical systems. With every available Code Black team member needed in the field, she would be running the room, keeping everyone informed and feeding them information in the thick of battle, taking what they would tell her and turning it into plans and solutions. The light tables, screens and devices flared to life around her. The difference between her job and my job was that she only had five lives to worry about … I had more than five million.

_  
You can't escape  
You can't escape the truth_

I was back at my position on the floor, standing in the center of my staff members' stations. "Situation report," I said simply, knowing two words would get me a flood of information.

"Tony's team is stable at Division," Lex was telling me, "They've got an uplink to the rest of everyone there."

"And Jack and his team handled the situation they were out on," Kevin picked up without missing a beat. "It's an all clear."

"Right then," I said, turning to look at the screen of statistics. Time elapsed. Targets hit. Casualties.

Casualties._  
  
I realize you're afraid  
But you can't abandon everyone_

As I stood firm calling orders, the soldiers I had come to rely on took to the streets, the streets quickly being overtaken by the invaders they were sworn to destroy. The surprise was clear in Jason and Derek's eyes – numbers they had not expected, time they didn't have. But duty was duty, and they plunged forward without a second thought. 

Smartly, Ben was on his phone calling for Weiss to get down to their position, calling my contact list to get backup. They could not take on such insurmountable numbers alone, and he knew it. Even so, he set his jaw, closed the phone, and readied his first shot before he could get close enough to reconsider. This was personal now. None of us had set out to be CIB slayers. None of us had asked for it. But it was a duty we could accept, and we understood the principles of duty.

Foremost among them: No surrender, no retreat.

_  
You can't escape  
You don't want to escape_

I mentally reminded myself to breathe. Jack, leading Team Delta (minus me, of course) on another sortie, had come back to the office and I saw his team members fanning out to get back to their base stations while they awaited reassignment. I wanted to run over to Jack and ask him to give me time, manpower, some sort of way to make this choice easier.

Instead I said, "Paula, pull up the calendar for Delta for me and prep the next package." My eyes were locked on the action in front of me, unable to invest it with any more meaning._  
  
I'm so sick of speaking words that no one understands  
Is it clear enough that you can't live your whole life all alone_

Derek cried out as he was hit from behind, then quickly got back up and exacted his revenge. Around him, Jason, Lan, Chloe and Ben were stuck taking on more than one Code Five per person. The rules of engagement had all but faded, instead turning into a violent melee. It was obvious that this had been planned for quite some time. They knew the team they were facing was the team meant to take them out, and they were determined to take us out instead. But as he wiped blood from his wounds, Derek knew there was a different plan involved.

_  
I can hear you in a whisper  
But you can't even hear me screaming_

"Get me updated facts and figures, and reassign Team Beta to op-sec." 

I was still reeling off orders with an air traffic controller's speed and precision, but my heart wasn't in it. I could see everything happening, but in my mind's eye I was thinking of my friends, my fellow soldiers, who were dying out there without the proper support and the extra front-line fighter I should have provided. My head hung slightly as I thought about it. I had failed them._  
  
But where will you go  
With no one left to save you from yourself_

Weiss made it to the scene quicker than expected, but all hell had already broken loose. Derek, Jason, Lan, Chloe and Ben were already in the thick of a firefight. Not to be dissuaded, Weiss pulled his own weapon and went straight for the heart of the fray. He was firing shots off before he was even within distance. Detective Smith arrived behind him with no idea what was going on, except that the city was burning and he recognized the good guys.

Realizing that Smith knew nothing about the Code Fives, Weiss quickly tossed him a clip of carbon-tipped ammunition. "You'll need that," he explained, still moving forward. "Nothing else can stop them." As he moved in and Smith loaded the new clip, both men felt the brunt of a Code Five exploding into ashes. Dropping his shoulder resolutely, the detective followed the agent into the fire.

_  
You can't escape  
You can't escape_

The battle had horrific odds: for each Code Five terminated, another seemed to appear. Jason and Derek were protecting Lan and Chloe, but everyone was being driven back. As Weiss arrived on the scene, Chloe was knocked back into Ben, who had to move quickly to catch her and fire off a shot at the same time. No one could keep it together like this.

They fought for another ten minutes more without any marked improvement. The more he slayed, the more Weiss began to consider the inevitable._  
  
I realize you're afraid  
But you can't reject the whole world_

Holding his position firm, Weiss looked over his shoulder at Detective Smith, who was falling back into a defensive position and still looked shocked at what was happening to him. "Go to CTU and get Brittany into the ops room!" he ordered. "We don't have much time left!"

Smith didn't have to be told twice. Firing off a last protective shot or two, he turned and bolted for his vehicle. As he hit the gas, his jolted eyes looked into the rear view mirror to see the fight turning more desperate and more violent with each passing second. The world was coming apart tonight.

_  
You can't escape  
You won't escape_

The silence was getting under my skin, and I was already rattled to begin with. I felt so useless, so compromised. Randomly, I lashed out and hit the operations documentation binder on my desk, sending it to the ground. 

_  
You can't escape  
You don't want to escape_

I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment, then reached over and picked the fallen binder up off the floor. Looking up after doing so was when I spotted Detective Frank Smith, whose eyes were wide and afraid and yet driven. As he headed right for me, I met him halfway and in a shaky voice demanded to know what was going on out there.

"They need you, now."

Something inside of me died as I looked into his eyes. The decision was there in front of me: one war or the other. And knowing I was losing everything fast, I turned with him and ran for the door, leaving everything else behind. 


	13. Shattered Apart

**2:10 A.M. Thursday**

          The door to the apartment slammed against the kitchen counter and ricocheted back as I threw it open and went bolting through the deserted living room. Behind me, Detective Smith caught the door with rapid-fire reflexes, closed and locked it behind himself, and just tried to keep up. In order to make it there faster, I'd jumped the couch and I was now on my way up the stairs in double-time. My heart was threatening to break my ribcage as all the lies of calmness fell away from me, replaced by fear and failure.

          I ran into the ops room to find Leticia at Chloe's workstation, set up to take over the position that Chloe normally filled as the spark plug and the connector. As she saw the two of us burst in, she joined us at the main table, perhaps noting the rampant emotions in my eyes that told her I had lost my control. She didn't waste any time, instead explained to me that the squad was engaged in a showdown at a downtown business plaza that would likely decide the outcome of the invasion.

          My brain was racing with a million different possibilities and a whirlwind of mental voices. I hit the table with a sound, trying to get them to shut the hell up. They didn't. I couldn't believe how I had just left them on their own. Duty was one thing in a world at war, but I had as many responsibilities, if not more, to the people out there dying as to the people back at the office filling out paperwork and keeping names straight. Which was the graver concern? I had made a blind mistake. And I would pay for it.

It's easier to run  
Replacing this pain with something numb  
It's so much easier to go  
Than face all this pain here all alone  
  


          I turned to the main monitor, on which was displayed the current battle feed, which would be coming off of Jason's camera rig's radar outfit and everybody's earpiece tracers. The amount of red dots was startling. It looked like garish Christmas lights out there. On the right-hand side of the screen I could see everybody's heart rates, using software we had co-opted from the main CIA's internal operations mainframe. They were pushing it to the limit. I knew Derek often spiked when he got into a heated battle, but he was really going now. The others weren't that far behind him, and they just kept going forward, never looking back. I stared at that wall screen for what seemed like eternity.

  
_Something has been taken  
From deep inside of me  
A secret I've kept locked away  
No one can ever see  
Wounds so deep they never show  
They never go away  
Like moving pictures in my head  
For years and years they've played_

There were moments, fleeting now, suppressed by an undying sense of duty, where I wished I'd never accepted the London mission. I wished I'd never picked up a gun and shot a man, though I'd fired my weapon a lot more times now. I wished I'd never interrogated Nina Myers and unleashed the beast inside of me. I'd been stepping closer and closer to its liberation since I fell from grace following John's death, but I had always thought I could outrun the darkness. The problem wasn't with the darkness, it was with the light, when you came around again. In the time since I had come back to the States, my life had been a chasm of love and loss, pain and exploration, and the weight was getting too much to bear.

I bit my lip and tasted blood again.

"Get me audio," I said in a quiet voice. "And a direct line."

Leticia moved to comply, and when Frank tried to put a hand on my shoulder, I shrugged him off. I needed to be alone.  
  
_If I could change I would  
Take back the pain I would  
Retrace every wrong move that I made I would  
If I could stand up and take the blame I would  
If I could take all the shame to the grave I would_

In another moment or two, Leticia walked over to me with a clip microphone, and I clipped it to my jacket collar. She wanted to give me the headset, too, but I waved her off.

"I want it through the main speakers."  
  


She nodded and hit a couple of keys on Chloe's keyboard. The immediate sounds of battle poured into the room as I began clearing off the main table with a fury burning in my heart. Bringing up the battle ROM on the table as well as the screen, I leaned over the virtual battlefield, trying to make sense of the voices and sounds that were resonating in my ears. I felt responsible for all of it. I was their leader, and even if I wasn't, I was still the one that had asked them to brave the night.

  
_If I could change I would  
Take back the pain I would  
Retrace every wrong move that I made I would  
If I could stand up and take the blame I would  
I would take all my shame to the grave_

"I'm online," I said, briefly, into the mic. My speech was still clipped. It's a force of habit from giving orders in the fastest time possible. Somebody joked once that I was starting to sound like Batman.

"Brittany, thank God." The voice belonged to Weiss. "We need you, man."

"I know." I tried to hide the infinite sadness in my voice. "What can I do?"

"We need some tactical down here," he told me. "They're everywhere…"

"I can see them." I nodded to myself, as if he were there in front of me. "I'll do what I can."

On the surface of the table, I saw the battlefield's size shrinking. They were pressing down on the enemy, or the enemy was pressing down on them. In close quarters, it was hard to tell which.  
  
_It's easier to run  
Replacing this pain with something numb  
It's so much easier to go  
Than face all this pain here all alone_

"Weiss, I need a status check," I told him. Heart rates could only tell you so much. Adrenaline can be generated because you're worked up about the situation, or because you're about to die.

"We're okay," he said, quick and succinct, as I heard a gunshot probably from his own weapon. "We're beaten up, but we're okay. For now. I don't know how much longer."

"Do what you can," I said, echoing Jack. Those seemed the most apt words for the moment.

Studying the main monitor and the table holo, my mind's eye created the situation for me as the sound filled in the blanks. It was so close I could almost touch it, but it was a phantasm. I was able to see in seconds the nightmare unfolding in this small corner of Los Angeles, where no one would ever know how close we came. My rational mind was formulating a counter-attack. The rest of me was remembering a time when all I had done was come in to CTU and study patterns and go home at night to do my College Algebra homework. That time was lost, and so was that young woman.  
  
_Sometimes I remember  
The darkness of my past  
Bringing back these memories  
I wish I didn't have  
Sometimes I think of letting go  
And never looking back  
And never moving forward so  
There would never be a past_

I looked to Leticia again. "Get somebody from the London office on the phone. It's time they heard the truth, don't you think?"

She nodded, knowing well the story. No evidence to substantiate the possibility of a Los Angeles invasion, that's what my ex-boyfriend had told them when he'd gone back to England. His evidence was right here. His evidence could be bleeding out on the pavement. I didn't know. She dialed the number Chloe had in the system, and somebody should be there to pick it up.

Meanwhile, I kept talking to the team in the field. "You've got a dozen more at the least. What's your ammunition status?"

"We're stable. Firing conservatively helps." Weiss was out of breath. He'd probably been fighting for twenty, thirty minutes or more. He had to be close to the end. We all had to be.  
  
_If I could change I would  
Take back the pain I would  
Retrace every wrong move that I made I would  
If I could stand up and take the blame I would  
If I could take all the shame to the grave I would_

Leticia tossed me the phone handset, and I caught it without really having to look. Vaughan Rice was on the other end of the line. He was our London contact and the man there that I trusted the most. He'd helped me in London, and unlike Michael, hadn't then stabbed me in the back. Twice. And he got down to business.

"What's your situation?"

"There's a full scale invasion going on, Agent Rice," I said. "Listen to the audio."

I let him hear the sounds of my team members yelling information to each other, of bullets firing so close together that they sounded like one single shot _en masse_. Then I stood there, cradling the phone. "I think you've got your evidence."

He was silent for a moment. "There's nothing we can do right now, you know that."  
  
_If I could change I would  
Take back the pain I would  
Retrace every wrong move that I made I would  
If I could stand up and take the blame I would  
I would take all my shame to the grave_

I did. London is, after all, a day's flight away; any resources or backup manpower would never make it in time. "I know that," I replied, "but you know the truth now."

"We'll send you backup fortifications immediately." He was committed to the cause, and it showed in his willingness to work with me. "And we'll upgrade the threat status accordingly."

"Thank you." I paused. "I'll keep you informed."

We hung up on each other, and I resisted the urge to throw the phone across the room. Instead, I just tossed it back to Leticia. Something had to be done. My heart, my soul, demanded instant action. I was terrified, however, that the outcome had already been decided before I could make it to the situation. I refused to think like that, even as I did.  
  
_Just washing it aside  
All of the helplessness inside  
Pretending I don't feel misplaced  
Is so much simpler than change_

"Here's what you do," I told Weiss. "You need to retreat, immediately."

"You sure?" he asked. "We can't let them go."

"You're not letting them go," I reiterated. "You're buying yourself time. You're in too close, it's too dangerous. You need to draw the combat out into the nearest open area."

"That's going to be in the street again," he told me. He hated fighting in the streets. Too many possible innocent victims in passing cars or nearby buildings. Thankfully, this was Los Angeles at night and incidences of both so far had been minimal. 

"I know, but we don't have a choice."

I heard Weiss yelling over the violence, giving my new standing orders. Hopefully not the last time I'd ever hear his voice.  
  
_It's easier to run  
Replacing this pain with something numb  
It's so much easier to go  
Than face all this pain here all alone_

On the battle ROM monitor, I saw the whole field begin to back up. Code Black was falling back, and after a moment or more, the Code Fives were following. They were beginning to peel out of the plaza in which they brawled, back toward the street they'd arrived on. Hopefully when the field opened up, their chances would improve.

Leticia had gone back to running op-serve. She kept looking at me every now and then to see if I needed anything, but I kept silent. There wasn't much more I could do from here.

The sentence reverberated in my head.

_Not much more I can do from here._  
  
_It's easier to run  
If I could change I would  
Take back the pain I would  
Retrace every wrong move that I made  
It's easier to go  
If I could change I would  
Take back the pain I would  
Retrace every wrong move that I made I would  
If I could stand up and take the blame I would  
I would take all my shame to the grave_

          The decision between my head and my heart took about two seconds for my heart to win out. I unclipped the microphone, tossed it on the table, and started toward my weapons locker, grabbing my earpiece, two of my SigArms and another weapon, and holstering everything. When I turned round, I didn't spare any time for detailed explanations.

"I can make it out there and hold the line," I said, conviction pulsing through my voice. "I'm going out there and bringing them home."

          "You'll be killed!" Detective Smith blurted, then he read it in my eyes. "You're going to sacrifice yourself in their place." He was staring at me now. "At least let me come with you."

          I shook my head. "You're needed here with Leticia. We need cutting-edge information." And with that, I started toward the staircase that would lead me down. I hesitated just a moment, turned and looked back at my best friend and the detective that had come through for me when it mattered. I had very little to say, except my trademark phrase.

          "I tried."


	14. Final Action

**2:46 A.M. Thursday**

          The engine died and I jerked the keys from the ignition, leaving them on the seat. In a few moments more I was at the top of the building, ready to make the leap to the ground below. I accepted the sacrifice I would have to make. This fall probably wouldn't kill me if I made it correctly, but I wasn't coming home. I knew that, and as I readied my gear I started singing softly, my microphone picking up the sound.

_"Hold on to me, love_

_You know I can't stay long_

_All I wanted to say was I love you and I'm not afraid…"_

In the operations room, Leticia froze. "That's an Evanescence song," she said and briskly cued up the track in the CD player, the haunting music playing behind her as she ran the room with a desperate precision. 

Standing on the edge of the building, I finished the final two lines of the verse.

_"Can you hear me?_

_Can you feel me in your arms?…"_

Then I jumped, the world rushing up to meet me, opening up to me below. As I hit the next rooftop standing and felt the shockwave pass through me but stayed my course, back inside Amy Lee kept singing, scoring the final act of our play of shadows. I could hear her voice in my mind, but the loudest sound was the desperate rising of war fast coming to a termination. 

I ran to the edge in one fluid motion and cleared it, almost there now; I could hear the sound of carbon-tipped bullets, smell the active ingredient of garlic in the air. My heart pounding in my chest like a metronomic piston, I could clearly identify voices – Jason's, Lan's, Derek's, Chloe's, Weiss' and Ben's. All of them just trying to stay alive one moment more. Once again hitting the pavement with a sound, I turned the corner and came upon the storm that awaited me at the other end of the street.

_Holding my last breath  
Safe inside myself_

They were all hanging on, fighting to survive, in the thick of it. There were maybe a dozen Code Fives and they had just had too much too fast. They couldn't do this anymore. Only I could complete the stand and save the future of humankind for another day, and I understood that. My life means nothing to me. Theirs did. Producing the two SigArms from my jacket, I bolted into the depths of the fray, everything hitting me in one second of total assured destruction.  
_   
Are all my thoughts of you  
Sweet raptured light it ends here tonight_

_"Get out of here!"_ I yelled. _"Now!"_

The first one I got to was Derek, him being at the rear of the battle and thoroughly mired in trying to beat a Code Five's skull in with mixed results. He had taken a severe wound to the head and was bleeding profusely but making no move to stop it. I popped off one shot as I approached, grabbing him by the shoulder and separating him from the fight. Interposing myself, I fired off two more shots and the air around me rippled with the explosion. As the others worked a strategic retreat, I worked a strategic attack. They weren't leaving, but I wasn't paying attention to know that.

Out of nowhere a Code Five descended on me, slamming into me from behind. I went down hard on the pavement, colliding with it and creating a sick crunching sound. My side burned as I felt skin tear with the impact. I pushed myself up on one elbow and my foot connected with his head, driving him backward. As I began to push myself up, he hit me hard in the jaw and sent me reeling. As Derek and the others watched, once again I went down hard.   
  
I'll miss the winter  
A world of fragile things

Split-second reaction: I leaped up, grabbing the Code Five by the throat and using my forward momentum to drive him down where I promptly capped him twice. Another one came in on me and I lashed out with my arm, hitting him in the nose with the grip of my second SigArm, hearing bone break as a result. Before I could think about it, I turned around and fired another clean shot. The decomposition made the ground tremble, and the blood on my hands shimmer in the moonlight. There were still others coming after me, two of them now, from either side. I had to make a choice.

Both of them collided with me at the same time and I felt the constriction of space around me and inside me as I had nowhere to go. The others were trying to get back in the fight but it almost seemed like the Code Fives didn't care they were there. Still, Weiss and Derek lead the renewed charge, their eyes full of hatred and adrenaline.

  
Look for me in the white forest  
Hiding in a hollow tree, come find me

I was finally able to move both arms upward and fire both guns blindly in a quick double-tap motion. The two bullets caught the two Code Fives in the ribcages and went out and through. Feeling crushed and nearly out of breath, I went down on both knees. Bruises were beginning to form on my arms and I felt something that had to be blood. 

Turning my head at the sound of noise, I realized that my team had refused to abandon me. Derek was busy staking a target straight through the heart. We made eye contact and wiping away my own blood I thought I could see water pressing behind his eyes. He was something different, Derek Barnes, something I'd never seen before.

"Get out of here," I pushed out just before the wind was knocked out of me.

  
I know you hear me  
I can taste it in your tears

The blow had come from the side, and I stayed down, desperate for air, feeling black closing in at the corners of my vision. I sucked in one breath, as large as I could get then, and willed my arm to fire. Screaming pain shot down it, but I managed to raise it and pull the trigger. My shot was grazing but it bought me time I needed. I corrected my aim and fired more accurately. Then I got up and started to move, anything to get this away from my friends and somewhere where no one else would get hurt.

I started toward the empty parking garage on the side of the street, but I never made it. I was slammed into one of the concrete pylons by the gate and just about brutalized. It felt like my stomach was imploding with every cheap shot they got in, but I gritted my teeth, held my tongue, and refused to show pain. Finally I closed my eyes and let the darkness fill in the rest.

Holding my last breath  
Safe inside myself

It worked – they stopped, and that's when I started. Blindfighting has been one of the areas I've tried to study, and I jammed my knee up into my captor's abdomen, then pushed in on his internal organs with my kneecap, pushing forward on the heel of my other foot. He stumbled backward, and I had enough time to grab my gun off the pavement and fire a responding shot. The resulting explosion was long enough to push back those following him and allow me to recover myself.

My ammunition was largely depleted, so I stowed both firearms and went on to Plan B: the carbon-coated long sword in the scabbard strapped to my back. Reaching between my neck and my jacket, I grabbed the hidden handle and pulled, bringing out the extended blade and holding it tight. I'm a former swordfighting champion, so I trusted in myself to make this work. Surveying the field, I couldn't see anyone else and hoped they had listened to my final command.

  
Are all my thoughts of you  
Sweet raptured light it ends here tonight

Giving the long sword one brief swing to make sure it performed, I swung out in front of myself as the Code Fives approached, tearing them wide open. The carbon burned and I could see it eating away at them; before they could react, I waded in, slashing with quick moves of the wrist until I hit bone and I knew they were going to die slow, painful deaths. Then I backed up, up the ramp that lead into the lit parking garage, hoping to make them come to me instead of the other way around. The tide of Code Fives surged toward me.

That's when it happened: everyone else appeared seemingly out of nowhere, renewing the attack. Derek and Jason cut two down before they could get to me, and Lan and Chloe were at my back providing cover fire. Ben and Weiss were picking and choosing their targets, and soon the parking garage had turned into the site of a melee. I didn't have time to question their decision as I had to move to avoid my own blade, then stumbled backward and fell, my target falling onto my sword.  
  
Closing your eyes to disappear  
You pray your dreams will leave you here

With the numbers of the enemy steadfastly depleting, we made one final push to drive them back, back into the empty and now thoroughly trashed street. Every now and then the air would ripple with an explosion. The extent of our injuries was no happy sight either, with Derek, Jason, Chloe and Ben all showing bleeding and God knew what else. Still they pushed on, fighting to slay rather than to capture. I beheaded one more and his head turned into ashes on the pavement as his body dropped.

My own ability to fight back was fading fast. I had taken on eight of them, maybe more, and they had pounded me badly. I felt as if I might give out at any moment. Finally I did, barely having time to let the long sword clatter to the pavement before I fell backward, bouncing my head on the asphalt and not even knowing that Jason had dusted the final Code Five. The pain shot directly to my skull, reverberating there as I tried to get up and failed.

  
But still you wake and know the truth  
No one's there

Resolutely, I tried again and managed to get to my feet. The others were all there amongst the fire and violence, clutching their weapons, playing through their wounds. They had made both a stupid and brave decision to continue to fight when they should have saved their own lives and ensured the security of the cause, but I couldn't think of anything to say to them, wounded soldiers all of them.

Instead, as my body screamed with blood and fire, I reached for my phone and dialed Vaughan Rice in London.  
  
Say goodnight  
Don't be afraid  
Calling me, calling me as you fade to black

Coughing up blood, I managed out the words: "It's done."

Then I dropped the phone and the rest of me followed it down and stayed down this time, and I know they were all watching me as I collapsed on the asphalt amongst the ashes of our enemies and the blood of our own.


	15. Coda: My Immortal

Home Base 

**San Marcos**

**Two Days Later**

_I realize things now that I didn't before. I don't know if it's surviving the moment of death that jarred my memory, but now I understand what has to be done, and why I have to do it._

_          Vaughan Rice called back this morning with his congratulations on our success at stopping the first wave. Thankfully he was light on the compliments. This isn't over, and we all know that. He never said a word about anyone else back in England, and I hope he keeps it that way. My only connection to CIB is that we're backed by them. It's a business arrangement. I loved Michael, and I still do, but that isn't my concern anymore, because it wasn't his._

_          The war against terrorism is going quicker than we expected. Coalition forces have already captured vital structures and executed successful tactical strikes. The rumor is that it could be over in a matter of weeks. I intend to be present in the room when the cease fire order is given. I intend to finish my job and give those serving in the field, not to mention those we lost in the line of duty, the honor of standing right there with them till the end._

_          But first things first. Sophomore year of college looms ahead of me and I wonder if I can maintain two world-saving positions or if I will have to quit. I never wanted to drop out of college, and I don't intend to, but sometimes life throws us a curveball, sends us down a path we never intended. When I was born, I was never supposed to live. When I was in school, I wasn't supposed to graduate a year early. And when I was accepted to summer school I wasn't supposed to meet a man and enter into our nation's service. But all of those things happened, and they happened to me. _

_          And yet, all I can think about is what happens next._

****

I'll always remember  
It was late afternoon  
It lasted forever  
And ended so soon  
You were all by yourself  
Staring up at a dark gray sky  
I was changed

Los Angeles had clouds again. Jason was on the roof, watching them and the passing traffic below as if he felt transcendental somehow. When you've been in a fight to save the world, everything seems just a little less and just a little more significant at the exact same time. Lan was standing behind him and he turned and looked over his shoulder at her. "We did it, huh?" he said. "We stopped them."

"Yeah, we stopped them," she echoed him. "For now."

"Yeah, for now." He nodded gravely. "But when it comes time, we'll be there. You know it."

"You bet." 

The two old friends smiled at each other, then Jason grabbed Lan into a huge hug. The things they had been through together were beyond anything I could have come up with, and they were teammates to the end. Now there was another fight and they were always game for another fight. After all that's what they did.

"So what do you think happens next?" he asked her.

"Well, our fearless leader's on bed rest … and our team looks like they've survived a riot …"

Jason was smiling when he said, "We have absolutely no idea."  
  
In places no one would find  
All your feelings so deep inside  
It was then that I realized  
That forever was in your eyes  
The moment I saw you cry

****_  
It was late in September  
And I'd seen you before  
You were always the cold one  
But I was never that sure_

I laid back in the medical facility bed, taking long deep breaths. It still hurt just a little to breathe. According to the expert medical opinion of CTU's medical staff, it would hurt for a while. I hadn't bothered to ask if they'd wiped my blood off the phone yet, and I had ceased to care. The pain had dulled, and my brain was playing back the moment on a tape loop, trying to figure out why I wasn't dead. I had cheated death one more time. Death and I went head to head a lot, and once again I'd won, but I wasn't celebrating. I was watching reruns of _La Femme Nikita_ on cable.

The door opened soundlessly and none other than my favorite detective shut it behind himself. I glanced up and took a good look at him. The wound on the side of his head had all but healed, and he offered me a low-key smile. I returned the small gesture. Life is made up of small gestures. Detective Smith sat beside me on the end of the bed, glancing over at me with something between awe and amused disbelief taking up residence in his timeless green eyes. 

"How are you doing?"

I muted the television, set down the remote and exhaled, wincing again when I did. I'd have to use my ability to hold my breath for twelve minutes more often now. "I … I don't even remember all the things they told me I hurt."

"For starters, you got the wind knocked out of you, cracked a pair of ribs, had a concussion, and a few lacerations," he listed everything off for me. "In short, you nearly killed yourself. When you didn't have to."

"Yes, I did."

"Why?"

"It was a necessary sacrifice."

He smirked slightly when I said that.

_  
You were all by yourself  
Staring up at a dark gray sky  
I was changed_

Frank took my hand, and his grip was strong, firm and charged with comfortable warmth. The look in his eyes took away all the nervousness I had about him being prepared to handle what he would have had to have seen soon enough – he had taken it in stride, taken everything like it was part of life, something I needed to learn. He squeezed my hand gently. "You say that a lot," he told me.

"Only because I mean it." I looked into his eyes for a heartbeat of a moment. "You're okay, though?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm okay. I mean, it's weird, but…" He looked back at me. "What it is really doesn't matter. What matters is you and your friends have the tenacity, the honor to go out there and fight the fight, no matter what happens. Even things like this," he concluded, nodding at me and my many injuries. "You do what you have to do."

"Something like that," I exhaled. "It's a lot to handle, this. For anyone."

"Look, I live in L.A., and I'm a cop. I've seen a lot." He smiled thinly. "Now, I'm not saying I'm ready to pick up a stake…"

"… I'm not asking you to…" I was quick to insert.

He nodded. "But I'm damn ready to appreciate what you've done."

"Haven't done it yet," I said. "It's not over yet."

"Well, it's over now."

"For now."

"Good enough for me."

He leaned in, closing the distance between us with a fluid grace. His lips were warm and gentle, full of a simple, undemanding fondness, and I realized he was kissing me, and I was kissing him back, and I didn't know where this was going or where it might end up, but I realized also that I didn't really care._  
  
In places no one would find  
All your feelings so deep inside  
It was then that I realized  
That forever was in your eyes  
The moment I saw you cry_

****_  
'Cause I wanted to hold you  
I wanted to make it go away_

Standing outside the infirmary door, Derek smiled quietly to himself, waited a moment more, and then went on to join the rest of the group, still with a fire in his eyes and a smirk on his face. Nobody would ever get out of him why he was grinning like an idiot, except that he'd told me so. He wouldn't let me off the hook about that for weeks. In that respect – and others – he's the brother I never had.

At CTU Lex dialed my cell phone and got my voice mail. He smiled to himself. All that had been needed to finally get me to back down was the distinct possibility of my own death. He was so amused that he sat there listening to my message. There was no further validation needed to know that everything was all right.

_  
And I wanted to know you  
I wanted to make your everything all right_

****_  
I'll always remember  
It was late afternoon  
In places no one would find_

Leticia and Chloe were in the kitchen, with Weiss and Ben sitting on the couch. This was the state of normalcy they'd all been trying for. It was Weiss who spoke first, leaning back into the couch and staring at the paint job on the ceiling. "I still can't believe it," he said to no one in particular.

"There's some weird stuff out there," Ben told him.

"Tell me about it," Chloe said, a smile accompanying her sarcasm. She grabbed more lovely beverages and she and Leticia started moving across the room.

"Where are you two going?" Weiss asked, looking over.

"We were going to go up to the roof with Jason and Lan."

"We may as well come along," he decided, and he and Ben joined the pair, offering their assistance in the transportation of lovely beverages. What kind of a day it was when all you had to worry about was not dropping the lemonade glass.

"When does the shock wear off?" Weiss asked his comrade as they headed for the stairs.

Ben shook his head. "It never goes away."

"It doesn't?"

"No, because there's some amazing stuff out there, too."_  
  
In places no one would find  
All your feelings so deep inside  
It was then that I realized  
That forever was in your eyes  
The moment I saw you cry_

****

          Nine of us stood on the rooftop, looking up at the sky.

          Ambivalent cloud cover fell across our faces and we didn't have much to say. Each of us looked from one to the other in a silent concordance. Each of us bore the evidence of what we had been through in this one day on our bodies, in our hearts, and coming out in our eyes. We were all from different walks of life. The odds of our crossing paths at all were marginal, and yet we had all found each other to be able to stand together this moment. Each of us was another's strength, weakness, soul, body, mind, heart. What had happened between us, because of us, and what had happened to the world were the kinds of things that didn't just throw people together – they formed bonds that could never be broken, like some kind of destiny. Whatever happened next, it would be together or not at all.

          The sunlight began to break through the clouds.

**End.**

****

**Acknowledgements:**

You should know the _Life Serial_ roll call from _Coventry, Their Law_ and _Heaven's Fortune_: Kiefer Sutherland (Jack Bauer), Richard Speight Jr. (Lex), Carlos Bernard (Tony Almeida), Will Patton (Jackson Haisley), Xander Berkeley (George Mason), Erik von Detten (Kevin Blaisdell), Sara Gilbert (Paula Schaeffer), Alexis Denisof (Stephen Claire), Enrique Murciano (Christopher Gautreau), Greg Grunberg (Eric Weiss), Karim Prince (Jason), Lizette Carrion (Lan), Lisa Sheridan (Chloe), Idris Elba (Vaughan Rice), Andrew McCarthy (Ben Carroway), and of course the amazing Ethan Embry (Det. Frank Smith/Derek Barnes). Not to mention Tisha, the normal half of the two of us.

**Music List:**

Part 1: "Bring Me To Life" by Evanescence

Part 3: "No One" by Cold

Part 4: "Red" by Sandra Collins (implied)

Part 5: "Unstoppable" by The Calling

Part 6: "Send Me An Angel" by Zerometer

Part 7: "Lies" by Evanescence

Part 10: "How" by The Cranberries

Part 11: "Somewhere I Belong" by Linkin Park

Part 12: "Where Will You Go" by Evanescence

Part 13: "Easier To Run" by Linkin Park

Part 14: "My Last Breath" by Evanescence

Part 15: "Cry" by Mandy Moore

_With this being the last _Life Serial _volume, at least for a while, I thought I'd let you know what happens to the characters and their many unresolved conflicts. Continue to the next chapter for a bonus music video set to Dakota Moon's "Look At Me Now" and find out what's in the future for our heroes…_


	16. Epilogue: Future Tense

Counter Terrorist Unit 

**Los Angeles**

          Pretty much everyone else had cleared out, but I was still working. I'm a workaholic. I never thought I'd say that till I came to work for CTU. But I had been working more and more and not regretting any of it.

          I packed up my stuff and closed down my station, grabbed my car keys and my jacket, and headed for the door.

          Something made me turn back. I paused, looking up at Jack's vacant yet eerily lit glass office. I smiled somehow at the craziness of my world, of my life, and then I turned and walked on.

          After all, there's always tomorrow.

_Tell me who you see  
When you look in my eyes  
Yeah it's really me  
That you don't recognize_

I'd become a completely different person, even from the CTU agent I had been before London and everything after came into my life. I was now a leather-jacket wearing (okay, well, I'd always done that) team-leading senior staff member, vampire slayer, best friend, partner, housemate, surrogate sister, ex-girlfriend, many, many things. And where I went, the best in people seemed to take on the worst in people, and most of the time, the good guys won.

          My car unlocked and I slipped behind the wheel, dropping my attache case on the passenger seat. The engine flared to life, and I cranked the Dakota Moon and decided that no matter what I was or had been, what I should be focusing on is what I could be. With that in mind, I backed out of my assigned parking space and headed for the one place that mattered most: home.

          Things were changing. I'd be ready. We all would.

_  
I almost believed you and gave up  
When you wrote me off  
You almost succeeded completely  
Till somehow I rescued the faith that I lost_

****

He had been staring at the medal for the last twenty minutes straight. Jack's a modest guy, and he doesn't like being rewarded for his work, and especially after so long, it was just kind of weird. He looked around the table and saw all of us trying not to snicker, smile or otherwise let on that we were rather amused by our longtime boss.

"What?" he deadpanned.

"Nothing," Matt quipped.

"Absolutely nothing," I chimed in.

"Yeah, you're so paranoid, Jack," Lex said, smirking anyway.

"Oh, that must be it," our boss said, rolling his eyes. "Don't you people have work to do?"

"Nothing," Kevin said with a shrug.

Mark nodded. "Yeah, absolutely nothing."

And Jack Bauer just gave up and smiled.

Jack Bauer remains the Special Agent In Charge of the Counter Terrorist Unit's Los Angeles office. He was awarded the CIA's highest duty commendation for his work at CTU. Following the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom, he created the External Operations division at CTU, allowing Brittany to make Code Black a sanctioned part of CTU. Matt DeVincentis was the first person to discover the truth. He joined the squad two weeks later. Lex Richards transferred over to serve with his partner. CTU remains one of the CIA's most trusted yet most underrecognized subdivisions.

****_   
  
Whatcha gonna say, whatcha gonna do  
How you gonna get to me now  
Never understood, no you never could  
Never really knew me anyhow_

The dart thudded into the target with a singular sound. Jason examined the point of contact with a technical eye. He always double-checked new weapons, mostly because I'd pounded into everyone the lecture about how they can break and then you end up dead, although I didn't say it like that.

          "Damn, this thing is precise."

          "That's the idea," Lan said, checking the results on her targeting computer. "What do you think?"

          "I think it works. It should work," he corrected himself.

          She nodded. "Good. Let's go over it again."

          "Never can do it enough times," Jason muttered, reloading the clip.

          He spun and fired clean through his first projectile.

_  
You kicked me when I was down  
It's funny how things come around  
'Cause look at me now   
  
_

****

The two of us sat across from each other at the table, and I shifted and scanned the room uneasily. "You know, I think this is the first time I've ever done this."

Frank cracked a smile. "What, gone on a normal date?"

"Well, we tried, but most of the time it was interrupted by Code Five crises, or more likely, one or the both of us having some sort of ideological difficulty." I laughed softly. "But it's nice to not have to worry about things as much anymore. To live life as it was meant to be lived, and take it as it comes."

"Amen to that." He studied my face. "You're really okay with what you're doing now?"

"I have to be." I nodded. "Somebody has to do it, and I'm already standing here."

He smirked at my half-sarcastic comment. Over the speakers, a familiar old song began to play. I recognized it by the first few notes as The Wonders' "All My Only Dreams." I've never been a fan of older music, but I've always loved that song. And, as it turns out, so does he. The two of us couldn't hold back smirking, and then he offered me his hand and asked me to dance. In his arms I felt like everything might be all right, if I just gave it the time it deserved.

"What about you, though?" he said. "Personally, where do you see yourself?"

I shrugged. "Just doing what I've always done. Just going out and playing."

"Sounds like a good philosophy." He smirked. "First we show up, then we see what happens."

I nodded. Every now and then, people have a way of surprising you.

The Code Five invasion had its second wave a year later. It was finally put down by the forces of Code Black, with assistance by the whole of the Counter Terrorist Unit's Los Angeles office and London CIB agents Michael Colefield and Vaughan Rice. Brittany, along with Leticia, transferred to UCLA after her sophomore year and moved to Los Angeles. She was reassigned to head CTU's new External Operations division, where she remains today. Frank continues to work with his partner, Joe Friday, in the LAPD's Robbery Homicide Division. Brittany and Frank continued to date.

They are still together.

****  
   
_But now all of a sudden  
You remember my name  
You're doing your best to convince me that it's only words  
But I'll never forget how you hurt me  
Now that finally the tables have turned_

I sat at the conference table listening to Weiss's briefing. All hands were present for the mandatory meeting.

I'd forgotten exactly how many of us there were. But I knew them all. Past, present – people I'd worked with for years, people I had worked with for only months. It didn't make a difference. We were all together. And we were all incredibly dedicated to the most unlikely of pursuits, the kind of thing that would make Michael Crichton's brain freeze.

Weiss went on, and so did the rest of our lives._  
  
Whatcha gonna say, whatcha gonna do  
How you gonna get me to me now  
Never understood, no you never could  
Never really knew me anyhow_

****

"I think I'm getting good at this," was Derek's quip as we gathered around with a pizza and a stack of bad sci-fi movies from the Blockbuster. It was Chloe's birthday, and we were celebrating by lampooning the worst of the worst, _Mystery Science Theater 3000_ style. But that wasn't what he was talking about.

I smirked. "Hey, you do have the top termination count among all of us."

"Not for long, he doesn't," Jason quipped.

"Is that a challenge?"

"Did you want it to be?"

I looked past them at Chloe. "How do you live like this?"

"After a while, it all sounds the same," she quipped.

"Be that as it may," Derek said slowly, "you know I wouldn't change a thing."

We all mumbled various agreement.

In the summer Derek finally discovered that his twin brother, Adam, was alive, having faked his own demise in order to begin deep cover validation of his own work under circumstances beyond his control. Adam and Chloe were finally married in the fall. Adam Barnes joined Code Black and remains under deep cover as an intelligence source, while Derek Barnes remains the unit's third-in-command and a member of CTU External Operations. Between them, the brothers were pivotal in the battle to protect Los Angeles.

****

_  
You kicked me when I was down  
It's funny how things have turned out  
'Cause look at me now_

_'Cause look at me now  
Look at me now_

CTU buzzed with activity, ever on alert, ever trying to predict the future and doing a damn good job. 

Lex swiveled in his chair, capable of doing three things at once without ever losing his focus. He had an odd smirk on his face as he reached for another donut. Walking by, Jackson just glanced over knowingly and chose not to ask.

Meanwhile, Kevin went to file his next report up in Jack's office, with Steve and Tony working away on this project or that project on the main floor.

Something was always happening at CTU._  
  
Never thought I could  
Never thought I would_

****

"So," I said leadingly.

"So what?" Leticia asked me, eyebrow raised.

"So what happened?"

"Happened with what?"

"Happened with you."

"Things. Things happened."

"Right." I snickered. "Don't tell me then."

"Fine, I went out on one date with Vaughn! One date!" She glowered at me, but she was laughing. "Shouldn't you be saving the world or something?"

I just smiled. "It's not over."

_Leticia passed her CIA agent examination and became a full-fledged CIA agent. When Weiss transferred to CTU External Operations, she took up his position. She transferred to UCLA and a new Agency apartment-operations base at the end of her sophomore year. And yes, she has been seen in the company of her new partner, but she remains silent on the subject. However, she manages a successful career, academic honors, and, unlike the rest of her cohorts, her sanity._

****

The Vault had become its own room now, just almost two years later. Specifications borrowed from CIB London. Storing the ashes of all the Code Fives we had killed. It was cold in here for good reason. I stood in the middle of the rows upon rows of chambers, each of which held one carefully catalogued tube with Code Five remains. Any of which could be regenerated if there was contact with Code Five blood, but until then was prisoner in this cramped space.

After a moment more of reflection, I turned and walked out, the door clicking shut behind me._  
  
You thought I was beat to the ground  
It's funny how things have turned out  
Everything's all turned around_

_So look at me now_


End file.
